Interior Hunter
April 6 - May 26, 2023, Threshold Gallery at Mithun
Opening Reception, April 6, 2023
Guy Palmer Merrill’s Interior Hunter is an exhibition of new artwork coming to Threshold Gallery at Mithun, opening April 6. Using digital photography, Merrill samples his surroundings, deconstructing elements of the built and natural environment which are then recombined in collage and painting. Remnants of a demolished building fill a plaza as if strange geology had abruptly taken place. Pathways cut through landscapes, creating portals to different realms. The membrane between interior and exterior is dissolved, and an interconnected system forms in its place. Human figures and Merrill's sculptural experiments are also present — either in or outside the frame, as observers or inhabitants.
Essay by Michael Alan Lorefice
They Were Carrying Guns, But I Had My Camera: The work of Guy Palmer Merrill
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Guy Palmer Merrill and his work for over a decade. As I’ve watched his work evolve over this period one thing is always constant: he’s always looking with uninhibited curiosity. It’s a trait that gets lost with age as we grudgingly shift away from the innocence of adolescence into the complexity of adulthood with the burdens of modern life shrouding the clarity of sight. That state of inhibition is one found in children, where everything in the world is new: The joy of seeing a bubble burst for the first time or that first bite of birthday cake, elicit a profound response because they are FRESH. And that’s Guy: taking that first bite of cake as the eternal kid (in the best possible way, of course).
In our latest studio visit and conversation about the new body of work one thing he said struck me as quintessential Guy and summed the work up perfectly: “We were out on this hunting trip partying and having a good time and everyone else had guns but I had my camera.” The statement struck me as funny, weird, a little bit unsettling and reminded me that regardless of where he is or what he is doing, he’s always thinking (scheming?) about making things and putting together divergent elements of the world. For Guy, vision is an accumulation of meaning and sight and he is always LOOKING.
A Mountain is Never a Mountain
I think about all of the interesting questions that Guy’s new show, Interior Hunter, poses to us as a critical embrace of the everyday that at the same time looks to transcend it. And what isn’t cooler than transcendence? The title piece Interior Hunter provides a good example: an uninspiring office interior in disarray meets a hunter walking through scrub brush in a bright-orange safety vest. These disparate images sit worlds apart in reality, but share the same comfortable space here, weaving a strange narrative of time, place and ecosystems. Taken individually, each image would have little to say, but in their commingling and juxtaposition a new narrative flourishes that does more than each could obtain on its own. This image- and all in the show- begs the question: What is happening here and what is my complicity in it?
Taking in this body of photographs (and the sole painting in the show- Perpetual Twilight) it’s not surprising that Guy is a painter by training. The work has many of the sensibilities I associate with the “slowness” of painting and looking at the world, while combined with the immediacy of the photograph. It’s easy to miss the importance of process in the work, but each piece is composed of multiple images (photographs and actual physical sculptures), many layers and then painstakingly built up over time. So being able to step back and see “the big picture” by allowing images and ideas to gestate is a huge part of the process for Guy. I like to refer to this as the “Unfocused-Focusedness”: If you’re in too tight you won’t get it all, but if you step back it will all come into focus. Take the recent work Off Campus Rubble: The photographs that make up this composite image were taken years apart and in different parts of the country, but memory is part of vision and the subconscious is a powerful thing. The initial photographs are what Guy describes as “field recordings” and had little value in themselves but each held some kernel of truth that functioned well with the others to create meaning. Having the awareness of how things work together and mingle on the page is the central problem Guy is trying to solve. They are photographs that dangle a bit of truth down to us, then quickly snatch it back. It is so fake it’s almost believable, or does that just make it more real?
Undertones: Fragile Ecosystems and Delightful Terror
And so I get dragged into these photographic landscapes but they aren’t really scenes. Even with all of his formal knowledge of art and composition Guy is not trying to recreate a scene. He’s really just luring us in to accepting the image enough so he can tell us what he really thinks, and he seems to be thinking a lot. These photographs present us with a lot to dig into: Good artists always make references to the past in direct or indirect ways and Guy’s work is not lacking in this regard. Immediately artists like Albert Bierstadt, JMW Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, William Blake, Frederick Church and a host of others come to mind as I respond to the sublimity of the images. But this feels like a dead end because it’s not just that. Each image always has a bump in the road that jolts us out of our classical reverie and brings us back down to the here and now. When I look at Lost Scaffold I have to ask myself: What is that scaffolding doing in that dense forest? It’s a bastardization of a bucolic, perfect green world and it really has no place. In fact, none of the carefully integrated objects or buildings or humans have any place in the backdrops of the natural world, which are so faithfully depicted. On closer inspection I find them more like abominations of the sublime 19th century landscapes in front of us. Religious visions start to filter down to me as the modernistic office building and mall become our twenty-first century gods. Who holds power in any of these situations- Corporations? Monoliths? Mountains? The mall? The landscape pales in comparison to these declarations of power.
Edmund Burke, the 18th century philosopher-statesman, used to describe that sublime state as a “delightful horror”. It is to confront the opposing reality that what gives us pain may also give us pleasure. And isn’t that the world we live in today? We are perpetually dwelling in a state of uncertainty and Guy’s work pits man against nature in a very literal way, balancing on a precipice.
When I first saw some of these photographs leaning against Guy’s studio wall out of the corner of my eye (like Dandelions, 2019) I thought the images and objects that occupied them might be actual things. And maybe they are real? I think they are- maybe not literally, but I see the ideas he presents everyday as I move through Seattle, framed by the window of a bus or a classroom- Mount Rainier looming large in the background with a new construction hurrying along twenty feet away from me; or the majestic, whitecapped Olympic Mountains softly asserting themselves amidst a bank of cranes humming along with impeccable efficiency. As I look around I can’t help but think: We truly are such incredible creators and these are acts of pure genius- look at all the incredible things we have filled the world with! And at the same instant I simultaneously feel a shudder of despair, and have to ask: but is it good? and a knot forms at the base of my stomach. In the end, I don’t draw any final conclusions from Guy’s work but I come away with a heightened state of awareness of the world, cautious, a little bit on edge, and questioning everything that I see. So Guy’s work brings me back to reality- my reality- where I continue to examine the world for all the good, the bad and the in between, and sometimes I just hang on for dear life. Only Guy Merrill would take a camera to go on a hunting trip…. happy hunting.
-Michael Lorefice
Seattle, Washington, April 2023