Lauren Fensterstock. Claude Glass Cube 1 (detail), 2014; mixed media. Courtesy of Fridman Gallery.

Lauren Fensterstock’s and Edgar Arcenaux’s works depict, or at least suggest, moonlight. Fensterstock’s Claude Glass Cube 1 & 2 consists of two glass-topped black cubes, the interior sides of which are overgrown with vegetation—leaves, flowers, vines—made from thick, dark gray cardboard and black felt, giving the effect of a moonlit, modernist terrarium. Arcenaux presents Detroit Steel, a series of nine paintings depicting massive geometric slabs, apparently arranged with purpose from various angles in the manner of a topographical study, in what seems a nighttime desert expanse (though it could be lunar).

It probably goes without saying that these works, besides reveling in the poetry of moonlight, plainly converse with the Minimalism that dominated American art discourse around the time that Calvino wrote Daughters. Arcenaux’s reference is in fact explicit: As indicated by red text printed across each image, the monoliths in his scenes are from Michael Heizer’s City and Dragged Mass, enormous sculptures begun in the early 1970s in the Nevada Desert. Fensterstock’s cubes, as the exhibition’s curators point out, call to mind Tony Smith’s work of the 1960s. But instead of the pure, physical confrontation through which Smith’s brand of Minimalism forced viewers to reflect on their own perceptual experiences, Fensterstock’s secretly lush objects reveal themselves to contain interior worlds of their own. One feels as though one could crawl in and emerge in a mysterious alternate dimension—something that no one would ever say of a Minimalist cube.

Edgard Arcenaux. A Four Dimensional City Casts a Two Thousand Mile Shadow, 2014; acrylic, chalk pastel, vinyl, and enamel on paper. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeye.

Such creative reuse of past art-historical ideas is a major part of the “recurrence” that characterizes the exhibition. The curators present this inclination as productive (“This show underlines the presence of the past and its place in defining our relationship to the future”) and, as demonstrated above, it undoubtedly is in certain regards. But it is worth pressing such optimistic statements about how these objects relate past and future when the “past” it concerns is only forty years old (or less in the case of Ariana Papademetropoulos’s impressive Ancestor, a large-scale painting also included in the exhibition that appropriatively re-creates a soiled magazine page from a 1970s home-decor magazine).

It seems almost a hallmark of contemporary art that art-historical reference points fall no further back than Minimalism. However smart, incisive, and renewing such works may be within the scope of recent art history, rarely are they able to destabilize or defamiliarize lived reality in a deep way. For when the cycle of recurrence is so short—when the past is so close to the present— how can artists begin to envision a future? Indeed, this mode of art making may reflect more of a subjection to the consumerism that Calvino hyperbolized, in which cycles of obsolescence and reappearance grow ever more rapid, than a critical antipathy to it.

Recurrence is on view at Fridman Gallery through August 15, 2014.

On Kawara. Lat. 31º25’N, Long. 8º41’E, 1965; acrylic on canvas; 83.5 x 96.3 x 5.3 cm (32.9 x 37.9 x 2 in). Courtesy of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Photo: Peter Cox.

On Kawara’s Lat. 31º25’N, Long. 8º41’E (1965), one of his rare coordinate works, tells of an exact location. Its addition serves to anchor the show’s general thread of location as a symbolic or constructed place. Without looking up the coordinates, it’s an idea of somewhere else, a projection left to the viewer. Having seen this work the day before the artist’s death, I notice new weight in the piece’s reference to place. Why would Kawara want to make a point of this location? One potential answer might be that it records the location where the work was made, but the coordinates point to the middle of the Grand Erg Oriental, an unlikely part of the Sahara Desert in which to engage in a bit of painting. This is not at all a desirable destination but a place to not be at. However, in 1965, the incredible isolation of Lat. 31º25’N, Long. 8º41’E may have appeared to be the only safe haven from postcolonial global turmoil. Perhaps it’s the only site on Earth that still cannot be imposed upon except conceptually, by coordinate.

Patricia Reed. Pan-National Flag, 2009; digital print on industrial-grade flag fabric; 250 x 150 cm (98.4 x 59.1 in). Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: Adam Rompel.

One floor up, and directly above Lat. 31º25’N, Long. 8º41’E, hangs Patricia Reed’s Pan-National Flag (2009). Stripped of color and printed on industrial-grade flag fabric, it’s a composite of the outlines of every existing national flag superimposed on each other. Its presence as a stately symbol is heightened by being inset into the wall, and its visual weight comes from the point at which the thin black lines merge into a messy black knot in the center—a dark, global mass argument. Painful to look at, this flag proposes a state of existence that considers every national ideal simultaneously, and what results is a symbolic state of obliterated understanding.

Ahmet Ögüt and Cevdet Erek. Ahmet Cevdet Bey: “Jacket”, 2011; alerted woolen blazer, two chairs; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artists & Moiz Zilberman Collection. Photo: Adam Rompel.

When mergers are proposed, they have a way of offering idyllic optimism. They proffer the possibility that the union will result in the best of both worlds. When two artists take on this concept, it follows that the art might be about the failed attempts of two entities acting as one. Ahmet Cevdet Bey: “Jacket” (2011) is a remnant of Ahmet Ögüt and Cevdet Erek’s first (and to date, only) project together. It’s a physical manifestation of an attempt at compromise, and of failing to form into one person. Acting in unison as “Ahmet Cevdet Bey,” this specially constructed suit jacket manifests the possibility of symbiosis, of being joined side by side in the attempt to make art as one. The double-width jacket draped across the backs of two matching chairs makes the absence of the artists feel momentary, as if there were only a temporary break in activity. Yet, in this Waiting for Godot-like scenario, the anticipated arrival leaves the viewer to wonder exactly what the pair had gotten up to and when they will return to collect the jacket and resume their activities.

In Minja Gu’s work 42.195 (2006), the artist attempts to prolong the inevitable. She documents her participation in a marathon—and walks the entire distance. Completing the race long after everyone else has lost interest, Gu presents the quintessential artistic dilemma of accepting the idea of becoming; as it is with an art practice, usually that becomes moment is the one in which the work is recognized. She raises the question of how an artist might succeed and also still be true to herself. In 42.195 she attempts to do both, and her actions not only subvert the conventional points of fast movement, winning, and achievement, but also entirely dodge the act of becoming the marathon with all of its adrenaline, angst, and pain.

Pierre Bismuth. In Prevention of Technical Malfunction – Unplugged Bruce Nauman Video Work, 2003; two Sony Trinitrons, Bruce Nauman videos transferred to DVD, plinths; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artists & Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Photo: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk.

Some works in the show negate the present as a means to embrace it. Pierre Bismuth offers the satisfying In Prevention of Technical Malfunction – Unplugged Bruce Nauman Video Work (2003). It’s exactly as you would expect from the title: Two side-by-side Sony Trinitron monitors, complete with standard metal frames, sit blankly on white plinths. As a video that is simultaneously ready to be played and never to be played, the efforts that protect it from “technical malfunction” keep it tethered to the present but also extend the work into the potential of a speculative future. Katarina Löfström’s Loop (The End) (2006) welcomes the inevitable by presenting a string of flashing red light bulbs draped from the ceiling that blink out the Morse code for “the end.” The work uses the present as a device to announce the imminent future that has yet to happen.

The Part in the Story Where a Part Becomes a Part of Something Else, 2014, installation view, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. (front to back) Gabriel Lester. Chance Encounters, 2011. Ceal Floyer, No Positions Available, 2007. Courtesy of the Artists & Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Photo: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk.

On the whole, Witte de With presents one of the most rewarding group shows that I’ve seen in a long time, and there are many more works that deserve mention. Curators Heman Chong and Samuel Saelemakers group the works within each room to draw out congruent threads without forcing new meanings. It’s a huge feat to curate a massive show that still makes sense, and the exhibition is a far cry from the recent trend of heavy-handed tactics by the curator-as-artist. Instead, the show flows effortlessly, as the works are given just enough room to be considered and then reconsidered in the larger context. And that moment of reconsidering is the transition to becoming.

The Part in the Story Where a Part Becomes a Part Of Something Else is part of Moderation(s), a two-year collaboration of events with Spring Workshop in Hong Kong. It is on view at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, through August 17, 2014.

John Sisley, Ice and Polaroid 1 (2010). Archival inkjet print, 11 x 15 inches. Edition of 3, AP I/II.

John Sisley, Ice and Polaroid 12 (2010). Archival inkjet print, 11 x 15 inches. Edition of 5, AP I/II.

The front and back rooms of the gallery are hung mostly with paintings and photography.  In the front, John Sisley’s two pieces Ice and Polaroid 1 and Ice and Polaroid 12 (both 2010) are small black-and-white inkjet prints.  1 shows a set of ice cubes sitting beside an undeveloped Polaroid photograph; 12 shows the now-developed Polaroid (a shot of the original set of ice cubes) next to a puddle of water.  The clean, evidence-based approach to depicting a process—here is the start, here is the finish—gives the pieces a quiet gravity and the photograph-in-a-photograph plays with ideas of representation, duplication, and the passage of time.  On an adjacent wall, Devon Oder’s Bleed (Tree Cave) (2009) provides a counterpoint to Sisley’s stark vision.  The enlarged vintage photograph depicts a sunbleached view of a cave of overgrown brambles and twigs hunkered at the edge of a forest, and it’s unclear whether it’s a natural formation or man-made and abandoned.  No matter, it’s an eleven-year-old’s summer reverie, the mysterious thing that she hopes to stumble on during long unsupervised hours.  Fingerprints and age spots mar the edge of the photo, attesting to its beloved status: this photograph has been looked at many times, and the smudges make for a wistful feel, conjuring that back-to-school pang of impending bus rides, structured days, and having to wear clean clothes.

Devon Oder, Bleed (Tree Cave) (2009). Lightjet print, 35 x 35 inches.

In the next room is Jesse Sugarmann’s I’m on Fire (2010), a deliciously masculine two-channel paean to frustrated love.  The left screen depicts, in succession, a Lincoln Town Car parked in a field, then backing forcefully into reflective mylar; or a man in a grey suit, sunglasses, and white shoes (presumably the artist) playing an amateurish version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” on an electric guitar.  On the right screen, the same car does hydraulic tricks and falls off cinderblocks; or has the front end propped crazily on (and then falls off) a tall four-by-four; or churns out clouds of smoke that billow over bright green grass and into the hot sky.  In the middle of all this, the arms of a forklift bang an old electric keyboard clumsily; later, the forklift lowers the entire car so that one tire mashes the keyboard, honking out a cacophonic accompaniment to the guitar solo on the adjacent screen.  Somewhere in all of this is a yearning that manifests itself as a pyrrhic desire to destroy things just to get a little fire going in the middle of a dry month.  Whether inspired by real or fictional unrequited love, Sugarmann’s video is pitch-perfect, a charming mix of boyish cool, summer heat, longing, frustration, and semi-dangerous stunts.  I left the gallery with Springsteen’s lyrics in my head-

Jesse Sugarmann, I'm on Fire (2010). Dual channel video, sound: 8:53 minutes. Edition of 5, AP I/II.

Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull
and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul

At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
oh, oh, oh, I’m on fire