Art Rotterdam

Alexandra Phillips
Lingering Brand-New

The visual work of Alexandra Phillips (Port Chester, NY, United States, 1988) moves between a cheerful orientation to the surrounding, everyday world and an exploration of the intrinsic properties of her materials. Her work is ‘handmade’, but is also rooted in the rich tradition of objet trouvé and assisted readymade. ‘I would say I represent, but I rarely adorn.’

There is a certain purism at play in Alexandra Phillips’ multifaceted oeuvre, the embracing of unchanged objects and materials, of that which is given. These can be identifiable forms – old table tops or broomsticks, printed matter or packaging material – or irreducible objects and materials from everyday life. As little noise as possible, refraining from non-functional alterations or additions; for Phillips, her materials provide the preconditions. She therefore prefers processes that are guided by the condition of the material itself. At most, Phillips accentuates or emphasizes properties that are already dormant in objects and ‘situations’. She calls them repairs, how accents, additions or new attributions lead to a recalibration of existing forms and meanings. Phillips points out the polarity of properties and meanings that trigger her: ‘There are delicate things that look strong. Light things that appear heavy. Dense seeming things that easily crumble, some things that seem watertight but leak’. Phillips has a keen eye for traces of use (and misuse), of function (and dysfunction) and eagerly adds these to her personal idiom. Herein lies the allure of her works, in the element of genuine wonder, free from pathos or nostalgia. Although the lingering memory is never far away.

In recent years we recognize in Phillips’ work an increasing interest in grids, patterns and articulations of repetitive shapes that activate the surface. Phillips wonders how such modulations of the surface relate to the wrenching concepts of sobriety and decoration, of austerity and pattern. When does superficial, non-functional decoration become a dominant characteristic, an elementary visual means? Especially in her recent works of smaller sizes, structures, rhythms and articulations function as a value-free but highly personal visual idiom. Although the notion of ‘value-free’ is equally problematic in relation to her work. After all, ingrained qualities – silenced histories, pre-lives, lost functionalities – form the foundation on which she builds, although the connection with original, literal meanings is often lost. It gives many of her works the curious status of simulacra, of copies without an original.

With her work, Phillips contributes to the public debate about value and identity. What makes her work American? At what point does trash become treasure, and how does the anecdotal relate to generally valid, universal values? Following a recent study trip through the southern states of the US, she noted: ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’. Her work shows us that the visual landscape of her native country remains a point of reference – and especially how the distance from the place has shifted her perspective. And here too, the everyday, often overseen phenomena catch the eye. Phillips: ‘A change of scenery highlights aspects of daily practice’.

For Phillips, that ‘daily practice’ also translates into matters that at first glance have little to do with art production, but do capture its essence. Our conversations about the relationship between work and workplace (environment), nostalgia and real life, about rituals, roots and visual stimuli, about the Antiques Roadshow and country music resonate in her conclusion that art (and artistry) are forms of resistance:
‘I did not arrive at this way of working as a political statement. But as time goes on, I’ve come to the realization that most all art practices, whether overtly or subtly, are a form of resistance’.
A resistance against well-defined, rigid meanings, but even more against the importance attributed to a final state of being. Art and artistry resist the notion of an end station, an apotheosis or a conclusion, according to Phillips. And doesn’t her work show us just that?

What do you take with you as an artist, what do you leave behind, what clings, what can you never get rid of? Phillips’ works exist in close coherence, no matter how great their formal differences seem to be. In their unequivocal uniqueness they refer to a dialectical basis, to the certainty that the preconditions for their creation are engrained in previous works. And in the certainty that tomorrow is a brand-new day, a new episode. It is this ongoing journey that fuels her work, or rather, her sincere admiration for the everyday.

Antoon Melissen