Artforum

“No Permanence Is Ours: Jane Brucker & Park Chel-Ho”

2018  |  Excerpts

The two artists in this exhibition recall these ancient, if often forgotten truths, in works that are at once universal and personal.

BY CLAUDIA BOHN-SPECTOR

Jane Brucker’s Unravel project, begun in 2009, likewise addresses things in flux, focusing on the human activities of doing, undoing, and redoing. Hand-knit sweaters, shawls, blankets and vests in varying shades of cream and beige are taken apart and re-assembled in a process that mirrors the compromise and change inherent in life. Arrayed on tiny shelves and organized on the wall like flotsam in a seemingly infinite display, her half-finished clothes are but temporary manifestations, inviting us to ponder grief and loss. Her found objects, cast in bronze, suggest our human desire to arrest things, however futile the effort may be. A trained Alexander Technique teacher, Brucker, in her accompanying Unravel performance, uses gentle touch to guide participants toward letting go of physical and mental attachments and toward the acceptance of impermanence as a guiding principle of life. Like Park-Chel-Ho, she reminds us that actions, not things or events, are the real ‘forms that bind.’ They are, as the ancient Buddhist texts instruct, our only true belongings and the soil upon which we stand.

CLAUDIA BOHN-SPECTOR, PH.D. is a curator, scholar and art historian living in Los Angeles. As guest curator of the Los Angeles, “Remnants of the Real,” Bohn-Spector wrote about Jane Brucker’s “Unravel” installation for the Laband Gallery exhibition catalogue.