Inside The Project, at 427 W. 126th Street, one finds an art scene unexpected uptown. While haphazardly stumbling upon the gallery is unlikely for most of New York’s art audience, it is well worth the journey. Both domestic and international artists frequent this piece of lower-east avant-garde tucked into Harlem.

Julie Mehretu’s giant canvases made themselves at home on the rough-edged walls of The Project from November 18 to December 22, 2001. Looming in the main hall was Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation. Once in sight, the viewer becomes fixated on processing the work’s various layers. It is a mess of different elements going about their business. Yet, one senses order. The layers start to separate themselves, but never so much that they can be viewed as purely distinct. One cannot analyze one layer without falling into another. Nonsensical shapes and events populate the 8’x18’ vellum canvas. Thick geometric blobs hover above sheets and sheets of frantic lines, translucent wrappers of battles, blueprints, and buildings. Upon closer examination, one notices that the work is composed of four different structured layers.

Layer 1.
Buried at the very bottom lie faintly recognizable figures, strong blocks that look like buildings. Yes, definitely buildings, with staircases and windows, pale architectural plans etched into the muted lilac vellum.

Layer 2.
The buildings are surmounted by what looks like the blueprints for a battle plan. Laid down in the same ink as the architectural sketches, only a shade darker, are plotted tracks and trajectory paths. Straight lines and perfectly composed dashed arches diffuse and rule this dimension.

Layer 3.
The chaos begins. Lines become organic, thick, and blubbery. Battle residue abounds. In this layer, depth is finally established and a landscape with perspective is created. It is impossible not to notice the explosions and smoke rising from some kind of conflict. Things are flying through the air. They are no longer just lines; they are corporeal forms. Against the rigid architectural plans beneath, these swatches of spirals create a grating juxtaposition. They induce a strangely pleasurable feeling of discordance.

Layer 4.
This is the first level to jump out at the overwhelmed viewer, but chronologically it was added last. Huge acrylic boomerang shapes seem to lift themselves off a surface that has already established itself as anything but flat. Chromatically, their hues are a notch below neon. They are solid, refusing to be ignored. Uncomfortable or not, they must be dealt with. They are even offensively cartoony at times. In this perturbing cacophony of expression, one wants to see more.

On the second floor, one encounters Rise of the New Suprematists. This 8’x10’ piece also has the characteristic layered line schema in ink on vellum, only this time minus the kitschy acrylic elements. There are also smaller works that seem like studies. It is nice to be let in on the progression leading to the monstrous and lovely confrontational piece downstairs. One of my favorites looks like a hedgehog, dare I assign representation. I can, however, offer two interpretations of Mehretu’s works.

Option 1.
Separate layers move from solid structures to more organic lines of chaos, but they always intertwine and taunt each other, making it hard to follow one at a time. An abstract depiction of society? The first layer might be taken as pure, constructed ideals, concrete supports for thinking and social planning, represented by the forms of buildings. In the second layer, the buildings are topped off with social interaction and plans for purpose and involvement. We have personal conflict in layer three, a probable significance of the uncontrolled organic lines. In level four, we find random shapes making the whole thing subjective and possibly pointless.

Could these layers and structures be mimicking the conflicting forces of human nature, the ambition to plan and the ability to put those plans into action? They simultaneously oppose and depend on each other, simultaneously run off their separate ways and yet exist in conjunction. In the neighborhood outside the gallery there are plans and structures expressing themselves everywhere: in people’s minds, between people, and in the outward constructions of people. From the architecture of the housing projects to the projected careers of Columbia intellectuals, the dialectic between plans and action — organic...plastic...clashing...rising...falling... smoking — is all around us. There can be symbolic value assigned to the elements in a piece like Rise of the New Suprematists. After all, this is the new Suprematism, not those old “squares.” Artistic idealism is nice, but we are a culture that needs to deal with reality. The order/disorder theme strikes too strong a chord with the way we function socially for this interpretation not to be viable.

Option 2.
If it looks like an explosion and a random shape, see it, swallow it with your eyes. Allow gut reactions to occur. Minimal academic processing and pure response is good. There is the feeling of non-objectivity and non-representation pervading the works. This is the essence of the movement known as Suprematism, officially started by Malevich in the “0.10 exhibition” of 1915. This show featured the scandalous Black Square on White Field. Its point: “Ponder this. Get mad if you will. Allow sentiments to exist and have meaning off the canvas, between you and the piece. This is art.”

Suprematism is the rediscovery of a notion of pure art that, in the course of time, had become obscured by the accumulation of “things.” Feeling is free to assume an external form. Malevich stressed that the name of the new style referred to the supremacy of pure feeling in art over art’s objectivity. The most simple geometric forms — squares, triangles, circles, or intersecting lines — composed into dynamic arrangements on the flat surface of the canvas can express the sensations of speed, flight, and rhythm.

Meaning is no longer constrained to the canvas. Most importantly, the viewer’s confrontation with a combative circus of lines can signify “everything” or “nothing.” Order tucks into chaos. Meaning becomes subjective. Should we back off or jump into a layer of needling hash-marks that promise to escort us into yet another ballistic dimension? If the structural layers are an abstract representation of social or psychological processes, it is fascinating to read a statement about non-objectivity in the very next level (i.e. the flying acrylic shapes). It is a swirling contradiction: extracting meaning from the blueprint level is futile when taken with the non-objectivity of the cumbersome acrylic shapes.

Subjectivity, abstract representation, non-objectivity, chaos, order: all clash and mesh perfectly well in Mehretu’s structural riddle. Even if it seems complex, it’s undeniable that any meditation on interpretation will lead to another…and ultimately to the grand-daddy of conclusions: the chaos/order meditation. She accomplishes this beautifully, reminding us that we all incessantly contemplate the relationships between feeling and objective reality, between chaos and order.

I am comfortable with either reading of Mehretu’s work, either the abstraction or the raw reaction. There is room for more or less thought. With Rise, I will candidly admit that I became happily occupied just with connecting the dots. The insane proliferation of inky events forced me to actively follow the tracks, staving off the pressure of over-intellectualizing (at least for a little while). Mehretu’s work concerns the space between the piece and the viewer. In this space, the viewer is free to run amok in the intricately psychotic structure and reach his or her own conclusions.

We must thank The Project for giving us the opportunity to witness such a provoking spectacle. Perhaps there is a new Harlem Renaissance in the making, a restructuring of northern Manhattan with an emphasis on art. No doubt, there are traces of beginnings with galleries like The Project and artists such as Julie Mehretu. Columbia take note.