Painting with Sharon Lockhart: Kevin Mueller finds himself immersed in the video NÔ, on show at the Whitney Biennial in New York.

Sharon Lockhart’s video NÔ is by far the most thrilling piece at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.
NÔ has much in common with painting – or certainly the process thereof. The video shows a rural Japanese landscape. In the foreground we see black earth, covering more than half the picture, followed by a stripe of contrasting pale golden reed and another stripe of autumn trees. The background is made up of a white sky.

In my mind I started comparing the video to the process of painting a canvas, when on the screen two people (a woman and a man) started carrying heaps of straw onto the black acre, working geometrically from left and right in horizontal lines, as if the painters brush started covering the canvas. This feeling was enhanced further, when the two figures start covering the ground gradually, by spreading out the straw with a rake, until the black earth is covered completely.

Watching this scenery unfold in the video cabin at the Whitney, something funny occurred:
I was leaning against the back wall of the cabin, without realising at first, that my feet where pushing the cabin’s carpet away from the wall, creating creases which stayed there as I took hold of myself and stood upright again. No one else seemed to have noticed and as my thoughts wandered between the video and the carpet, I hesitated to readjust the carpet because it strangely felt like interfering with the work process of the two people covering the ground in the video. I felt it might look as if I was mimicking their work had I tapped the carpet with my feet as to flatten it out again… So strongly was I taken in by the proceedings in the video. As soon as other visitors started tripping over the folds in the darkness of the cabin, I grabbed a hold of myself and readjusted the carpet.

I mention this interlude only to underline the strength and the beauty of Sharon Lockhart’s work. It took me in completely and everything else I saw at this somewhat disappointing biennial, simply faded in its shadow.

Kevin Mueller, New York, March 2004

Sharon Lockhart, born 1964, Norwood MA. Lives in Los Angeles CA.
NÔ, 2003, 16 mm film installation, colour, sound; 33 min. Collection of the artist; courtesy Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

The Whitney Biennial 2004 runs until May 30th

www.whitney.org