It helps to think of “The Sympathetic Imagination,” Diana Thater’s new retrospective show at the MCA, the same way Hemingway encouraged readers to approach his own work—as an iceberg. Only 10 percent of the material is easily accessible, and it looks like a big, white sheet of ice that makes you say, “Yes, and?” The remaining 90 percent lies below the surface and requires special tools to excavate and appreciate.
“That fascinated me,” Thater says. “Everything in a bee’s life is in sets of six. The comb is a six-sided form. They have six eyes.” Knots + Surfaces is an attempt to bring the viewer into the world of the bees. Five images coalesce into one, which looks like chaos to a human but would probably make perfect sense to a bee.
But is the technical—or the explanation of the technical—necessary to the experience of the sublime? Should it be? Perhaps an answer lies in Oo Fifi, Five Days in Claude Monet’s Garden, the earliest-produced work in the exhibit. Thater had a fellowship to live and work in Monet’s home in Giverny, France, where she spent some of her time documenting the growth of the garden, which was guarded by a fierce cat named Fifi. In the two videos that make up Oo Fifi, Thater plays with separating colors and putting them together again, an homage to Monet’s method of painting where, instead of mixing his pigments, he put dollops of pure colors next to each other to create a blended effect. This seems simple to us now, part of the most elementary art history, because Monet and his followers made us accustomed to this way of looking at color. It’s possible that Thater’s way of looking at space will become just as commonplace, especially since she’s so willing to teach us. v
Through 1/8/2017: Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E. Chicago 312-280-2660mcachicago.org $12 adults, $7 students and seniors
