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David Gassoway reading J.M. Tyree's essay on Robert McCarren, on Robert McCarren's observation platform

In the final chapter of Franz Kafka's novel Amerika, the immigrant protagonist, Karl, joins something called "The Nature Theater of Oklahoma." The Nature Theater is a vast organization that recruits unemployed people in American towns and cities, feeding them and putting them to work in their productions, each according to their abilities and skills. Since no one is ever turned away ("everyone is welcome"), The Nature Theater is also a kind of nationwide, all-embracing charity. One feels that Karl will thrive there, even though the novel is incomplete and ends with the new recruits riding off by train into the landscape of the West. Exactly what sort of art such a massive undertaking might produce is never revealed. All we know is that The Nature Theater of Oklahoma has a splendid gilded box seat specially designed for the President of the United States. The rest is left to the imagination - the grand, perpetually unfinished possibility of America.

forest

lookout

Robert McCarren makes observation posts, places from which to look. He will be intervening by building a platform from which to view the show. He will also be identifying views around the city and the world for the show visitors. J.M Tyree who brought this artist to our attention will be writing a critical essay about his work.

Start at the Observation Post by Robert McCarren. It seems appropriate to begin here, to begin by considering this work that is big and visible, yet it aims to take on a subsiding presence. The work seems to say, “Don’t look at me, look out from me.” The Lookout wants to direct your attention not toward itself but toward what it stands above and what surrounds it. Does is denote itself sculpturally, is there an apparent eye behind how it stands or does it assume practicality and sound building conventions as an aspect of its martyrdom? Take note of what you do or don’t see from here. What kind of perspective does the Lookout offer? From here we can look out on all that we have yet to ask ourselves or to see.

Robert McCarren, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Nick Normal, Jayeon Kwon

It's a basic attitude of semi-essentialism that the 'real stuff' is right there. Of course, this is nothing new in art. Works of art have long served to show us things or bring attention to phenomena that might otherwise have been missed. Or they show us things in a new way. Works of semi-essentialism are unique perhaps in the simple fact that they nestle so closely among the things that are already there. At the same time, a certain amount of work is required. It isn't the point, contra Fluxus, that art and life are simply one. It's that art can peek out from all kinds of places. One needs to cultivate, therefore, a knack for noticing things.

forest

Robert McCarren mentioned this as an inspiration.

Strange unclassifiable book. Sort of about urban planning, a bunch of personal anecdotes about how a place affects the viewer. Many parts of New York City are mentioned, Grand Central, Prospect Park, Times Square. A treat for the tourist of the commonplace.

Robert McCarren makes observation posts, places from which to look.