Martin Wilner’s compelling new show at BravinLee Projects is both conceptually and visually complex, the work of an intellect working on several intersecting planes. Wilner is a practicing Freudian psychoanalyst, a scholar, and mentor to analysts in training. He is a self-taught artist whose work reflects his involvement with the human psyche, popular culture, and comic strip art. His artistic practice is intertwined deeply with his psychoanalytic work and comes with an interesting twist; Wilner the therapist invites the public to engage deeply with the world of Wilner the artist via social media.
Wilner has been working for decades on conceptual and visual projects following this singular artistic path. The work with which I am most familiar is entitled The Case Studies. Each month, a “subject” enters into a “journey” with Wilner. The subject communicates with him each morning either through email or text, telling Wilner whatever is on their mind. It could be a dream, a worry, a victory, a poem, whatever comes to mind. Each subject expresses themself to Wilner in a manner of their choosing. Wilner responds to this missive and turns it in an Instagram/Facebook post. By the end of the day, he posts a drawing of his own that reflects the post.
At the end of each month, these drawings are composited into one large piece that traces the month’s episodic journey. One can “read” the archive of these on Wilner’s Instagram page. It is a unique and fascinating use of social media, and if one engages, it becomes a little addictive, much like social media itself. The participants are always anonymous. The patient/therapist relationship is both private and public, and we are voyeurs into it.
Most of the work being shown at BravinLee Projects is based on Wilner’s 2015-16 artist-in-residency at SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), a research organization closely affiliated with NASA. While the description is complex, it involves a deeper dive into the nature of consciousness, the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life, and A.I. This project relates totally to his previous bodies of work but takes the investigation into consciousness in entirely new directions. The description on the gallery website explains the conceptual foundation of the project in detail. I prefer to focus on the drawings themselves because they work beautifully in their own right.
The exhibition consists of a series of double-sided, wall-mounted drawings as well as a few conventional one-sided pieces. The double-sided drawings are mounted on the wall on hinges so that the viewer can swivel them. The images are astounding. Wilner has created his own idiosyncratic visual vocabulary that draws from many sources but remains firmly rooted in 20th century culture. A cacophony of imagery from Alfred E. Neuman, the icon of MAD Magazine, to images from astrology, cartography, comic books and typography are all woven together into intricate narratives. The pieces are rendered painstakingly in pen and ink. The gallery provides magnifying glasses for those who wish to use them. One side of each drawing is in color, the other in stark black and white. The narratives flow up and down and across the pages, much like the meandering of the mind at work. The stories are not linear, yet they are coherent. The relationship between the two sides is not immediately apparent and adds to the general sense of mystery and investigation that pervades Wilner’s work.
Much like the therapeutic relationship, we, the viewers, are asked to puzzle out or bring our own meaning to Wilner’s drawings. They are narrative, but that narrative is open to the viewer’s interpretation, transference, and projection. We become the therapist and the drawings the subject. Like the children’s game of whisper down the lane, the story changes over time and retelling. Wilner draws his version of the reality presented to him by his “subject.” We then interpret the artist’s version through reading his version. Each visual and verbal story contains an array of possible outcomes.
Perhaps I am projecting, but I think that Wilner understands that reality is slippery and ever evolving. This is what the project with SETI is about . But of course Wilner’s work as a psychoanalyst would have perhaps already shown him this fact of human nature. .His drawings present a world view that like the therapist/patient relationship entice us to dive deeply into a universe of possible narratives. It’s a fascinating construct that has given bloom to a unique and compelling vision.
All photos courtesy of Bravin Lee Projects
Martin Wilner- When We Cease To Understand The World(Extraterrestrials and AI on the Couch) through Sept. 28. 526 West 26th Street #211 NYC 10001 212-462-4404 info@bravinlee.com Hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6
About the Writer: Melissa Stern lives in NYC and The Hudson Valley. Her mixed material sculpture and drawings are in corporate and museum collections throughout the US. Her multi-media project The Talking Cure has been touring the United States since 2012, showing at The Akron Museum of Art, Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston), The Weisman Museum, Real Art Ways (Hartford) and The Kranzberg Art Center (St. Louis), and at The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton.MA. She has written about art and culture for The New York Press and CityArts for eight years and is a contributing writer to Hyperallergic and artcritical. Melissa has joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer.