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In the work presented in this catalogue Nancy Mee once again reaffirms her capacity to raise significant and disturbing issues in extraordinarily beautiful sculpture. The pieces displayed here were begun during the month she spent at Chateau Beychevelle on the Medoc Peninsula of France. She and six other artists, representing seven modes of visual expression and coming from seven countries, were invited to spend July 1992 as part of the third group of guests to the Centre International D'Art Contemporain. Set up by GMF, a French insurance company, and SUNTORY, a Japanese corporation, who now own in joint partnership the long-established Chateau Beychevelle vineyard in Saint-Julien, the Center established modern and functional studios in a classical and sensual environment. This proved a perfect setting to stimulate the creativity of Nancy Mee whose constructions such adjectives equally describe. The charge to the artists was for each to explore the cardinal virtue of justice. The resulting sculptures by Mee reflect a complex and very political reading of this quality. Mee's justice is literally pictured as the classical Greek goddess, blindfolded and with balance and sword in hand. However, her blindfold permits her to ignore what is going on around her rather than to remain impartial. She is likely to use the sword for revenge as much as for restitution. The scales, while balanced, remain empty of any content. Mee, as an American artist, seems to be suggesting not only our own ugly past but also some of the current, egregious examples of legal justice exercised throughout the world. It is hard, at least for me, to look at "Three Hanging Men" and not think of lynchings. "Hanging Man #2" and "Hanging and Bound Man" bring to mind martyrs, political and religious. Mee's is an image of legal justice, the justice the state provides. It implies no consideration of issues of social justice. The pieces have an austere and elegant beauty, serving to remind us how far removed the judicial arm of government can be from the daily concerns of people who steal to eat, women and children who speak out against abuse, or activists concerned with changing the relationships of power and promoting equity. "Justice Revered" is a perfect image of the model court with its paraphernalia of ritual and authority, and "Hanging Man #1" reflects the cleanness of the outcomes we would like to expect. However, their very purity reminds us how little these visions have to do with the sordidness of many actual courtrooms and executions. Put together in the same room, Mee's series of sculptures forces us to confront the contradiction between the ideal and the real of justice. She, as always, seduces us with beauty in order to compel us to rethink what we see and believe. This is powerful art by a powerful artist. Margaret
Levi |
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©2002
Utopian Heights Studios