Leyden Rodriguez Casanova’s An Uneven Floor

“An Uneven Floor” seen from the outside gallery window (left-hand side elevation)

What are these people doing (in the photo above)? Is this a private party, a carpet show, a recreational space for children, a conference, or a reunion of sorts?  “An Uneven Floor” was installed last Saturday at Locust Projects in the Design District. The title of the exhibit is conveyed so literally as to elicit bafflement. Artist Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova has built two promontories inside the gallery space and carpeted the whole thing in bright pink. That’s it.

(Right-hand side elevation)

To under­stand the direct cor­re­spon­dence between title —-> art-work, we have to do a lit­tle his­to­ry: For a good part of the last decade, Rodriguez-Casano­va has pro­duced a kind of auto-bio­graph­i­cal œuvre that exhibits very lit­tle inter­ven­tion. Let’s address the lat­ter first. The idea is to present objects as they appear in every­day life, as they relate to the artist’s per­son­al his­to­ry. To put it sim­ply: If the paint­ed sun­set is art, why not bring the sun­set and show it as art?¹

This is pre­cise­ly the point of Three Lamps with Dif­fer­ent Lights (2007):

Or see Over­turned Pink Chair (2006, below). Both pieces refer exact­ly to what their titles state.

One obvi­ous con­clu­sion is that Rodriguez-Casano­va has removed one step from tra­di­tion­al art rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He “presents.“² Sure­ly, this pre­sen­ta­tion requires plan­ning (and a slight­ly dif­fer­ent craft).³

 A Mirroed-Wall (2006)

Walls divide and sup­port. Mir­rors reflect. The mir­ror­ing in the instal­la­tion’s title brings forth a con­cep­tu­al redun­dan­cy, which, instead of “numb­ing mean­ing” (as when one repeats a word indef­i­nite­ly), actu­al­ly opens up a semi­otic hori­zon where the art­work can be per­ceived more openly—and not with­out baf­fle­ment.

Back to “Uneven Floor,” Rodriguez-Casano­va wants us to think about things oth­er than floor/geodesics. In fact, one could pon­der the show’s title as a case of met­alep­sis. What I’m get­ting at is that the most inter­est­ing point about the exhib­it is not its uneven­ness. Rodriguez-Casanova’s “as is” fur­ni­ture and the gen­tly-sloped pink-car­pet­ed gallery floor bring forth passed-over aspects of our dai­ly prac­tices as they go on amidst fur­ni­ture and floors. How come?

The issue of “even­ness” is sud­den­ly brought to the fore, but as a “dis­tance,” as we come to per­ceive the floor in the absence of a “nor­mal,” lev­eled floor. More than think­ing about it, Rodriguez-Casano­va wants us to “feel it.” This pas­sage by Jacques Der­ri­da in his Par­ages (p. 36) may help put this in per­spec­tive:

The more one is tempt­ed to come near the prox­im­i­ty of that which is approach­ing, the more whol­ly oth­er ‑and thus infi­nite­ly dis­tanced- of prox­im­i­ty buries or emp­ties itself. 

If Rodriguez-Casanova’s art can “present” at a par with real­i­ty, it must change mood from immer­sion to aware­ness. Said dif­fer­ent­ly, even as one checks out Rodriguez-Casanova’s exhib­it, one can still miss the “uneven­ness” of the floor.

And yet, the artist’s “pre­sen­ta­tion” is not with­out risks: As art and real­i­ty are inter­pen­e­trat­ed, art risks becom­ing as banal as real­i­ty itself. Then, some­thing as authen­tic as one’s own nar­ra­tive can end up sti­fled, by the seduc­tion of nos­tal­gia, which makes the dis­tanc­ing from one­self the more dif­fi­cult.

That said, the pub­lic at the show could­n’t stop talk­ing about the pink-all-over phe­nom­e­non. Momen­tar­i­ly, I looked for psy­cho­log­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions. These dis­parate quotes belong in a book about the psy­chol­o­gy of col­or, pub­lished in 1961:⁴

*Pink and tints of blue and vio­let are decid­ed­ly “sweet.”
*The babies stared longest at yel­low, then white, pink, and red. The least atten­tion was paid to black, green, blue, and vio­let.
*Bath­rooms should be pink to give the skin a lumi­nous glow through reflec­tion.
*Pink and yel­low mos­qui­to cur­tains do not har­bor insects.

Accord­ing to Michael Ham­phill, women respond to pink more overt­ly than men (which is to be expect­ed giv­en that girls are con­di­tioned to this col­or since they are infants).⁵  In addi­tion, Lucretius described dawn as “pink” in his famous poem On the Nature of Things. Oscar Wilde’s favorite col­or was… Yet, these facts are total­ly irrel­e­vant.

The choice of pink has to do with Rodriguez-Casanova’s own expe­ri­ence grow­ing up in a house of Cuban immi­grants whose idea of inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion was rather peculiar—and which was not that far from the norm of oth­er Cuban exiles in Mia­mi dur­ing the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s. This fact explains The Light Behind Pink Blinds (2007).

It’s worth men­tion­ing that the show is a lot of fun: I saw chil­dren climb­ing up, slid­ing down, and rolling all over the car­pet. Adults were less adept, but nonethe­less walked up and down the slopes ‑as if test­ing the firm­ness of the props beneath them. Every­body looked around (at the envi­ron­ment con­tain­ing them­selves?). Many were puz­zled.

The direc­tor of Locust Projects told me how dif­fer­ent the space looked with­out peo­ple in it. But then, would it be “uneven,” or “pink”?

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¹ This brings a cru­cial dis­tinc­tion between Nature and art. Art is, by def­i­n­i­tion, man-made. ² A sort of Wildean twist where “Life imi­tates art.” See Oscar Wilde’s The Decay of Lay­ing (Harp­er and Row, 1989, p. 982). ³ This new craft can def­i­nite­ly make stuff, but being more con­cep­tu­al­ly-dri­ven, it gen­er­al­ly plans and pro­duces. ⁴ Faber Bir­ren’s Col­or Psy­chol­o­gy and Col­or Ther­a­py: A Fac­tu­al Study of the Influ­ence of Col­or on Human Life (Uni­ver­si­ty Books, 1961). ⁵ Note on Adults’ Col­or-Emo­tion Asso­ci­a­tions—arti­cle by Michael Hemphill, Jour­nal of Genet­ic Psy­chol­o­gy, (Vol. 157, 1996).