Generally when artists are paired together in an exhibition, it’s because their work speaks to the other, or highlights particular points of focus—there is discourse to be had, undoubtedly, but it tends toward the conceptually or tonally arterial. Rare is the curatorial encounter which goes as far as to suggest a visceral connection between individuals and their practice across time and space, almost to the extent of directly questioning the laws of physics which surround us. Such is the case with “The star exploding in the body,” bringing together Emery Blagdon (1907-1986) and Guadalupe Maravilla (b.1976) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Blagdon and Maravilla never knew each other, live(d) in different periods and places, but somehow—the exhibition suggests—uncannily share a sensibility and points of engagement which makes them alternates, echoes of each other through time. It’s a notion that is firmly underscored by the artwork on display, containing experimental machines as well as artifacts which carry the weight and body of a mystical portkey, transporting you across worlds on contact. The viewing experience, in fact, is something akin to having stumbled into the forgotten laboratory of a savant who was never fully understood in their time, something between the wild-eyed and the seer. Wherever you land on the scale, there is little doubt that this is an artistic encounter which is sensorily all-encompassing, drawing you into its heart of possibility, as deeply personal just as it is universal.
The biographical through-line for both artists is healing. In Blagdon’s case, his family having experienced multiple cancers at their homestead in Nebraska, it relates to his working for more than a quarter of a century in open defiance of the disease, believing that energy in land and objects contained healing properties. Through sheer force of will, Blagdon gathered thoughts, objects and presentations in elaborate arrays, constructing what he would come to term “The Healing Machine” (c. 1955-1986).
For Maravilla—who arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied migrant from El Salvador at the age of eight—it was a cancer diagnosis at thirty-six which led him through treatment to engage with alternative and traditional healing practices, many involving energies. From there, he began manifesting sculptures he referred to as “Disease throwers” or, once again, “healing machines.” As with Blagdon, Maravilla’s work includes an array of everyday objects, seemingly innocuous, but tied with meaning as they relate to his migration, which he “activates” through sound and ceremony.
For both, healing is necessarily an assiduous and ritualistic practice; and in focusing on light, energies and the properties of objects, innately links our bodies to the cosmic sphere. Little surprise, therefore, that the exhibition’s title “The star exploding in the body” should reference the furthest operational possibility of stars, alongside our corporeal, human vulnerabilities, recalling a line by the character Vincent Freeman from “Gattaca” who, when learning of his impending death, says: “They say every atom in our body was once part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving, maybe I’m going home.”
There is an intangible magic at play in “The star exploding in the body” which is at once transformative and transportive. It is art which is complex but also accessible to the point of indelibility in experience: This is a show which simply refuses to be shaken on exiting. In conversation, Amy Horst, executive director of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, comments that the venue’s programming “amplifies participation and shared experience for anyone in need of healing and comfort,” and specifically how Blagdon and Maravilla’s exhibition “embodies the center’s mission of creating an accessible space for art, connection and exchange, extending beyond the gallery.” The synergy is clear, and on reflection suggests that maybe this is an aspect of what healing is, or can be: space in community and cultural practice to engage, recognize shared human experience and potential, and in that way, assuredly lighten the load.
“Guadalupe Maravilla with Emery Blagdon: The star exploding in the body” at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, through November 29.