With its significant investments in agricultural technology, pervasive military presence, and rumors of a nuclear reactor on campus, I often find myself wondering just what kinds of covert research are really going on behind closed doors at the Pennsylvania State University at University Park.
Ignorance can be bliss, but my concerns were immediately resurrected upon encountering a new installation by artist Quintin Owens on the University’s main campus. Originally put-off by its seemingly “trendy” rawness that is currently popular in contemporary installation-based work, within moments the piece began to grow on me, inviting endless narrative ruminations and tantalizing my imagination.
Tucked away in a small, closet-like room in Penn State’s Visual Arts Building, Owens’s installation evokes speculation about the covert research experiments that may be going on right under our very noses. Scattered in clusters on a seed-strewn floor rest countless curious seed-covered balls, the largest approximately the size of a grapefruit. Sheltered by a protective ceiling-like barrier of blue string and a warm glow of overhead light, these balls ominously lay-in-wait like monstrous eggs in an incubator. Throughout the space runs a matrix of white pipes, appearing to operate between useless random points on the floor, walls and ceiling, suggesting a strange and quirky irrigation system that is directly linked to the internal plumbing of the building itself. Yet upon closer inspection, we see that there are no holes in these pipes to serve as a sprinkler system: so how is it that some of the seed balls have begun to sprout? The distinction between reality and illusion becomes nearly indecipherable, challenging the viewer to try to solve the mystery.
Perhaps even more unsettling than the “how” is the “why.” I felt an unshakable sense of foreboding, waiting for these weird seed balls to sprout. In my own experience of this work, I felt the suggestion of sinister R&D conspiracy theories hanging uncomfortably in the warm, humid room; but the open-ended eeriness of the installation encourages infinite imaginative possibilities. It feels elusive in a way that invites the viewer to invent their own narrative as they ponder its concealed mechanics. Even after deciphering some of the secrets behind this work- the “man behind the curtain,” so to speak- my experience of Owens’s illusionistic installation haunts me, continuing to conjure fantasies of the bizarre, the inexplicable, and the horrifying.
*Owens’s untitled installation will be on view throughout the second week of November 2009 in the Sculpture Department on the first floor of the Visual Arts Building, on the Pennsylvania State University/University Park campus. Admission is free and open to the public.
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