Rebecca Rutstein: Diagrams from the Depths
As with any truly interesting artist, Rebecca Rutstein’s artworks operate on multiple levels and can never be reduced to a single interpretive framework. And yet I feel confident in asserting that diagrammatic thinking plays an outsized role in her artistic practice. Just seeing the works I’m presenting here, much less knowing the context of their making, it’s readily apparent that her work is situated somewhere along a diagrammatic continuum, stretching back to the beginnings of science-based “conventional” diagrams and leading to more contemporary diagrammatically inspired art practices [see my About Diagrams and Diagrams and Art]. I began my first blog posting by listing various reasons why artists might be motivated to engage diagrammatic thinking in their work. I suspect one reason that drives Rebecca is the diagram’s capacity to visualize invisibles. Or so it would seem, as so much of her work is directly or indirectly influenced by her experiences as an artist-in-residence on board research vessels exploring the ocean floor at various sites around the world. Here she describes those projects in an artist statement: “Through ongoing collaborations with scientists, much of my recent work and upcoming projects focus on the deep sea, and shedding light on a world hidden from view.” (More detailed descriptions of these projects can be found at http://rebeccarutstein.com/projects/).
As I have discussed in earlier writings, three functions (among others) that are common in conventional diagrammatical usage are (1) to visualize the invisible, (2) to generate further knowledge beyond what is explicitly presented, and (3) to translate temporal processes into static (spatial) displays. From what I gather from Rutstein’s writings, along with close observation of the artworks, all three of these are operative to various degrees in these projects. But for the sake of brevity, I will emphasize what I feel is the most pronounced of these features—visualizing the invisible. So let’s look at the primal scene, as it were, to which her artworks refer-- the bottom of the ocean. She describes her primary focus on these ships as “visualizing data and maps,” and her key aspiration, to “deepen one’s connection to these unseen places and processes.” Certainly the ocean floor qualifies as one of the earth’s last remaining terrains of terra incognita. And although the bottom of the sea is not technically “invisible,” it’s largely hidden from human view.
I’m going to bet that both the team of scientists and Rebecca were tasked with visualizing these submerged geographies and natural phenomena. Whereas the scientists relied on their sophisticated, high tech instruments for mapping and data collection, Rebecca was working away, full-on analog, with acrylic paint and stretched canvases. All this leads to some obvious questions: Why bring along the artist? What value did Rebecca add to these explorations? Or, more to the point, what kinds of “visualizations” did she bring (quite literally) to the table?
These questions prompt insightful comparisons and contrasts between properly scientific, data-based visualizations and an artistic (“expanded”) diagrammatic response to these very same “scenes.” I see many artists’ diagrammatic-based art that powerfully evokes scientific visualization, but few whose works are so closely tethered to their “primary sources” as Rebecca’s “artist-at-sea” paintings. On first viewing, it’s hard to know to what extent the various features of these paintings—especially the ubiquitous latticed networks—mirror those data-based visualizations which she must have viewed frequently [see Screen display of sonar mapping data]. Were they mere painterly illustrations of raw, data-generated information, or were they more improvisational interpretations? I strongly suspect it’s the latter.
Yet another feature that I feel distinguishes many of these paintings from other science-inspired diagrammatic art practices is their unique convergence of both abstract and pictorial modes of visual representation. By “pictorial” I am not suggesting that Rutstein is presenting conventional images of readily recognizable things or scenes. Nevertheless, looking at her painting, GALAPAGOS I, I readily conjure a palpable atmosphere that plausibly exists somewhere if only in the mind’s eye of the artist. Here the distinction between its pictorial and abstract may not be clear-cut, but I feel it’s significant. I also take note of the decidedly geometric abstract progression of latticelike grids with their ready associations of topographical mapping. But crucially, these geometric networks do not occupy the visual field in isolation; rather they are situated in what feels like an enveloping space that operates not so differently than the atmospherics in a Turner painting. Of course, Turner’s referred to actual observed atmospheres, whereas Rustein’s are suggestive of a much more watery surround. I would argue that this very tension of what I’m characterizing as pictorial and the more prototypical abstract elements is what initially grabs and ultimately holds my attention. As with so many conventional and “expanded” diagrammatic displays, I am prompted here to actively engage the painting through a common diagrammatic process of correlation. I’m impelled to correlate—to make sense of—the co-presence of these radically dissimilar representational elements.
On the other hand, many of Rutstein’s works dispense altogether with pictorial elements and instead play with purely abstract visual representations. An excellent example is Progenitor III which relates to microbial filaments on the ocean floor, an important area of study she encountered on one of her artist-at-sea expeditions. Variations of this and other diagrammatic structures are present in many of her 2D and 3D works, including an especially monumental and prominently situated mural in Philadelphia [see Convergence].
I will close by returning to my earlier questions: What value did Rebecca add to these aquatic explorations? And what unique kinds of visualizations did she bring to the table? I happen to think these are critical questions in light of the what seems, these days, to be a golden era of SciArt. It’s fairly clear what science is providing to art but less obvious what art is giving back. A deceptively simple answer is that Rustein is undoubtedly besting her colleagues at aestheticizing information, as evidenced by the sheer beauty of her works and their subsequent inclusion in multiple art venues (galleries, museums, and online platforms). But I would drill down even further and suggest that she, like many other diagrammatic-inspired artists today, succeeds in expanding the scope of raw data and information into the more nuanced domains of feeling and imagination.
I will conclude with Rutstein’s recounting of her discussions with her scientist hosts where they said that her presence and participation on their ship—their up-close observations of her improvisational artistic process--proved immensely valuable in transporting them outside of their proverbial box. Throughout these expeditions they were genuinely excited to share their observations and data with an artist who, like them, was driven by a similar passion for inquisitiveness and discovery.
For a more extensive view of Rustein’s work, go to: http://rebeccarutstein.com and www.bridgettemayegallery.com
As well, she posts on Instagram @rebecca.rutstein.