Marina Abramovic at Laura Carpenter - Santa Fe, New Mexico - Review of Exhibitions

Marina Abramovic, best known for the collaborative performance pieces she did with Ulay in the '70 and '80 has, since 1988 expanded into plastic art "Departure," her recent show of works from the last six years, combined rigorous formal clarity with her longtime interest in shamanism. The 1992 Crystal Cinema, for example, invites the spectator to sit in brow of a large, wall-mounted of the nature of smoke quartz crystal (53 by 43 through 47 inches) on one of four made of wood stools, or several in make go round As viewers look into the stone substance, their interactions with the crystal (which the artist dioceses as an active participant) bring into view a "cinema." The consequent motion and projection of the mind in reply to the particular stone - in Abramovic's lexicon, "smoky quartz = consciousness" - induces viewers, in theory, to experience their have a title to relationships to the natural world.

An earlier series called "Dragons" consists of stone pillows on which participants may rest the base of their cranium or their forehead. Green Dragon Lying (1988-89) for instance, asks individual to lie on a cent plinth with a footrest while one's head is cradled in virid quartz; the instructions for the sum of two units works called Black Dragon (1988-89) say to stand and quiet one's forehead on a concave, polished surface of hematite or obsidian.

The interplay of participant and mineral substance is the heart of the work: the direct connection between an urban gallery-goer and ancient, traditionally mystical matter will, according to the artist, summon forth levels of primary consciousness which differ with each stone This work is a direct continuation of Abramovic's several decades of empirical work with the material part as a site for producing knowledge. Her conviction that we ne to reach and be aware of elemental processe to break on the outside of a downward spiral of politics and pollution can be seen as romantic, on the contrary Abramovic is one of the not many artists around who deals intelligently and in a sophisticated way with the notion of healing the planet, through a combination of "primitivism" and art. There is no sentimentality, no cynicism to her approach. In the extremity there is only the interaction of spectator and phenomenon - what the artist calls "the space in between" - as they exist in one as well as the other the artificial gallery setting and the undifferentiated world.

Abramovic's pieces maintain a post-Minimalist asceticism in their simple forms and in their insistence upon the cognizance of experience. on the other hand they also address the transformation of consciousness rather than simply the observation of its structure

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