The Oil Tanker (Part Three)

Atlantika Collective Member Sue Wrbican's show titled The Iridescent Yonder recently opened at the Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, VA and was reviewed in this space on July 14. During Atlantika's monthly meeting, Sue walked us through the multi-faceted show, which includes photography, painting, and installation. She emphasized that the exhibit was conceived as a response to the tragic loss of both her brother, Matt Wrbican, and her mother within several weeks of each other. In fact, the exhibit centers around a large-scale collaborative painting of an oil tanker created by her brother Matt and two collaborators, Phil Rostek and James Nelson, in 1991. During the walkthrough, we were introduced to Phil, who not only helped us to appreciate the importance of Matt Wrbican's accomplishments, but also regaled us with tales about collaborative efforts the group initiated in the 1980s under the name "DAX," or Digital Art Exchange. Phil's recollections of their joint efforts and the early responses of artists in the 1970s to 1990s to important cultural developments, including the advent of the internet, proved extremely fascinating, and we invited him to elaborate on the very significant "paradigm shift" that he witnessed in art during this period. We hope that this series of posts will not only shed light on innovations in American experimental art during this period, but also flesh out the relevance and significance of Sue's recent work. You can read Part One here and Part Two here.

by Phil Rostek

I was very happy to see the wonderful installation that the Oil Tanker received at the Craddock - Terry Gallery, Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg. The Oil Tanker is comprised of four 6’ high by 4’ wide panels that are bolted together to make a 6’ high by 16’ wide surface. Matt and i were pretty deliberate in making something that would last; and the tanker survived 30 years of storage without much structural deterioration. It was stored in 2 commercial venues over the years - both were dry and climate controlled. The weight of the piece requires a solid wall for installation. To take the stress off the piece, the installation in Lynchburg supported the tanker in a rather ingenious way. I was delighted to see this beautiful presentation.

As i wax philosophically about memories of long ago, i hope i do not digress into far-fetched tangents. I see relationships everywhere and to a fault. Even the posts that support the Oil Tanker in this photo evoke symbolic significance for me. Being a helpless grammarian, it raises these two words in my mind: Foundation and origin. My mentor Robert Lepper defined design in several ways; this is one that i remember: “Design is the mutual dependence of the components of a system.” For me the collaboration that brought the Oil Tanker into the world enjoyed additional creative input in Lynchburg that further described what the Labyrinth show aimed to suggest. The components of a system had further described the concept of distributed authorship. A foundation was provided that was integral to the practicality of need; yet remained within the mutual dependence of a system.

That thought raises implications about what we expect when we impose the notion of aesthetic into our consideration of most everything? Extraneous things, when removed, are perceived as improvements. The door then opens wider toward open ended thinking. It provides more room to take in more. When a system is efficiently contained, in the context of The Iridescent Yonder, it all becomes a component part within a larger schema. The very life of Sue Wrbican, the imagination and inclusion of Claire McConaughy, and the Oil Tanker all set sail together on some voyage into a 3 person installation:

From Sue Wrbican’s installation “The Iridescent Yonder” at Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, VA.

Fragile Rainbow, Claire McConaughy, 120” x 40,” 2021.

If art and life are indeed a unison (or are at least believed to be a unison) and art and life together are considered to be an inseparable entity... relationship experience expands to appreciate subjectivity within a guarded attitude that is respectful of, not fearful of, subjectivity. I believe it is that zone that empowered Sue Wrbican to take on the The Iridescent Yonder. The loss of a mother and a brother, especially if we have shared similar trauma, needs little explanation. The impulse to place that in full view via the creative act stands close to what we all know, what we have all have felt, what we all call up in our hearts from time to time. The will to celebrate being alive in the midst of those considerations brings the term “Yonder” into rather sharp focus. Art and Life ponders eternity without apology and without a “look back,” as Claire said in her painting, “Fragile Rainbow.”

Plan for Labyrinth exhibition, Phil Rostek and Matt Wrbican, 1990.

The Oil Tanker was a portion of a larger show called the Labyrinth which closed with a long hallway. The wall and table presented pictures of the participating artist's mothers. My mother was alive then. Now i join Sue in the iridescent Yonder of recollection.

The awareness of experience as it is lived can include an awareness of some larger gestalt. This has engaged the minds of great thinkers throughout the centuries. Times of insight. Those times when things seem clear. Those times when you see yourself in the bathroom mirror - when you see what is there - not a memory that avoids the stark truth of what time has done to a face. Art can take us to this awareness. Art can move us into a receptivity to awareness. It can beckon us to engage the Yonder.

Ocracoke Path, Sue Wrbican, 53 1/4“ X 40 1/4”, 2017.

This is a view of that awareness, that disappearing path, that acknowledgement that things, including ourselves, move through time.

And so the sails that propel us through our lives are given pause in this presentation. Easy chairs help to anchor the sails. A reference to repose, a reference to times when there is time enough to step back and look at life, a look that seeks the mind not just the spirit. In my opinion this is more about analysis than it is about simplistic capitulations to recollection.

Sue speaks of a show where she includes her friends - as a way of getting a message out. In classic artistic reservation she does not spell out her opinion any further than that. There are only two friends in the Iridescent Yonder show. Both have to do with the show’s intent. Both were selected with care. Both retained a life of their own while mixed into relationship that was aimed at expressing the ineffable.

This is quite compatible with thought processes that were employed in making the Oil Tanker. Three artists acting in concert and acting with autonomy - at the same time. The desire is to avoid premature conclusions and the temptation of self proclamation.

I close with this image from the Labyrinth show. It is a wing wall reference to the Oedipus riddle. The picture on the wall (that Matt Wrbican chose) depicts Sue, as a child in a party dress, running past her grandfather who is holding a cane. It is gesture that unnerves me a bit. It is so much in keeping with the sensibility of Matt Wrbican and the fusion of art and life that i have enjoyed with Matt and Sue over many years. I also knew Matt’s dear mother. i also knew her cats and her garden and her intellect.

From the Labyrinth Exhibition, 1991.

The Oil Tanker (Part Two)

Atlantika Collective Member Sue Wrbican's show titled The Iridescent Yonder recently opened at the Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, VA and was reviewed in this space on July 14. During Atlantika's monthly meeting, Sue walked us through the multi-faceted show, which includes photography, painting, and installation. She emphasized that the exhibit was conceived as a response to the tragic loss of both her brother, Matt Wrbican, and her mother within several weeks of each other. In fact, the exhibit centers around a large-scale collaborative painting of an oil tanker created by her brother Matt and two collaborators, Phil Rostek and James Nelson, in 1991. During the walkthrough, we were introduced to Phil, who not only helped us to appreciate the importance of Matt Wrbican's accomplishments, but also regaled us with tales about collaborative efforts the group initiated in the 1980s under the name "DAX," or Digital Art Exchange. Phil's recollections of their joint efforts and the early responses of artists in the 1970s to 1990s to important cultural developments, including the advent of the internet, proved extremely fascinating, and we invited him to elaborate on the very significant "paradigm shift" that he witnessed in art during this period. We hope that this series of posts will not only shed light on innovations in American experimental art during this period, but also flesh out the relevance and significance of Sue's recent work. You can read Part One here.

By Phil Rostek

The decade of the 80’s brought about dramatic changes that impacted the social order in every conceivable way. Financial markets saw great shifts of wealth, employment became a learning curve that replaced routine, hierarchy in personal relationships saw great migrations of status and recognition. Professions morphed, identities scurried into mythologies, orientations of all kinds stood on their head. These tumultuous times, however, were lived - like all times are lived - day to day. The scale of what was happening was absorbed by the daily pressing details that one must naturally confront in order to get by. Underneath it all was a feeling of uncertainty. An anxiety instigated by the multiplicity of new things that were occurring and new things that had to be learned. On top of it all was a giddy excitement that enthusiastically embraced utopian possibilities. Possibilities that lent themselves not only to personal opportunity - but possibilities that could make the world a better place.

Artistically speaking, America seemed to be punctuated not by large chunks of sensibility that were later called movements; but rather abject change that was moving through time decade by decade. The 70’s were quite different from the 80’s; the 90’s would most likely bring more and faster change. Below is an image of Matt Wrbican starting his work on the Oil Tanker. The year was 1991. It was early in a new decade and it felt like it was early in a new decade. Art was in its primary role - not as a forecaster of what was to come - but as a perceiver of what was Actually transpiring in the present. Matt's graduate studies had resulted in an M.F.A. and Carnegie Mellon University endorsed him as a master of his art. Matt was on the fulcrum of what most of us remember with deeply etched feelings - a time in our own lives when very pivotal decisions are made. All preparation toward a future comes shockingly down to what Actually is going to happen. It was in that zone that Matt found himself in a basement fashioning a modern Minotaur.

Matt Wrbican working on The Oil Tanker, 1991.

I take part of the responsibility for that. Matt and i were close friends. The DAX Group experience that i shared with Matt had me branching out too and i was firming up convictions that took about a decade to distill. I was moving toward a desire to do something more contained, more structured or planned. I had become fatigued by unchartered interactions that stemmed from untethered egalitarian ground rules. I was a relationship thinker who had become suspect of Relativism. Somehow the idea of an absolute seemed a return to something pleasant. i began questioning my own position within a tech-class society. Platitudes about how the world should be seemed to fall way too short. in a rather sober way, i acknowledged that my DAX theories were possible through technical expertise that i did not have at all. I was also seeking relief from the virtual world of a screen. i wanted to be a traditional stick in the mud.

In the 70’s i studied with this man, Robert Lepper, at Carnegie Mellon en route to my MFA:

Robert Lepper lighting a cigarette - late 80’s - from my DVD ‘Robert Lepper / a Personal View'

Lepper pausing to light a cigarette had become a signature gesture. It meant he was pausing to line up his thoughts; he was getting ready to “ think.” It had the quality of a mini drama - a theatrical event. Everybody called him Mr. Lepper, students, faculty, everybody. Mr. Lepper’s course ‘Individual and Social Analysis’ was the soul of the visual art program at CMU; just as it was years earlier when it was Carnegie Tech. One didn’t even have to study with Lepper one on one. His influence permeated the place. Arguably Lepper taught the first course in Industrial Design in the nation. He taught both in the design department and in the art department. Lepper saw little distinction between the two areas in my opinion. Andy Warhol would take his class that was then called Pictorial Design at Carnegie Tech. To put a point on a time frame, Andy graduated Tech in 1949 - the year i was born. I graduated CMU with an M.F.A. in 1973 - the year Picasso died.

Rainier Crone in his book about Warhol would draw attention to Lepper’s course problem: Locate the most significant object in the social flux. I think this is insightful and it should not be roundly dismissed. i think it is a salient factor in young Andy’s education… later to become a soup can, a Marilyn, a Brillo box. Lepper took pride in his ability to analyze. Some associate Lepper’s teaching with behaviorist psychology. He had an uncanny way of clarifying issues. By a spontaneous ability to contextualize, Lepper unveiled the origin of things. He gave reasons why things occurred; then gave reasons why they occurred when they did. My first year at CMU, with exposure to Lepper’s insights, would see me forego painting altogether. In my second year i would come back to school wearing white tie and tails.

The Oil Tanker also is inseparable from this man:

Bruce Breland in 1986 shortly after the DAX Group participated in the 1986 Venice Biennale.

Capturing van Gogh air for Bruce Breland’s “Museum of Modern Air” 1973'

Matt and i both studied with Bruce. Studying with Bruce was same as being friends with Bruce. He imposed no false sense of authority and imposed no academic standards that were purely academic. Bruce thought on high levels of thinking; his standards were measured by profound simplicity. He lived art and life together. In unison. Bruce compared expression, insight and commitment to Faulkner, Janice Joplin, Buckminster Fuller, Black Elk. He inspired others by story-telling about Black Mountain College, The Cedar Tavern, Allan Kaprow and ‘Fluids’ and about the career of his friend Roy Lichtenstein. Bruce Breland spoke from personal experience and personal involvement. He was a clairvoyant pioneer in the world of early telematic exchange. When the DAX Group was written up in an article in New Observations the group looked like this:

Photo by Jeff Breland , 1990.

Asking whether all this looping around and memory raking is extraneous or integral to an appreciation of the Oil Tanker is a legitimate thing to ask. Maybe it's a little of both. In that respect i confess that i like Niels Bohr and the whole idea of contradiction. Maybe matter does exist somewhere between a wave and particle and maybe his response to Einstein still stands up. Maybe we should not tell God what He does. i mention those things to you because they were mentioned to me by Mr. Lepper. He called Bohr’s response ‘the put down of the century.' If an artist is asked if he or she likes the color blue - the immediate response will be: “Next to what?” This is relationship not compartmentalized thinking. So i just put a feather in the hat of Relativism after all. In the spirit of Walt Whitman may i repeat this beautiful thought? You say i have contradicted myself? So i have contradicted myself. Within me is multitudes. If any of this makes sense, then the Oil Tanker might make sense. It also moves me to show the next picture. Me, my wife Marcia and Matt Wrbican at the Warhol gravesite:

Photo circa late 80’s

Let’s bring eternity into our conversation. After that visit to the graveyard, Matt and i shared an evening with the aging Lepper in his apartment. When Lepper saw our gravesite images he got very interested. The overarching point is that Matt and i were still learning from Lepper. I spent many hours in conversation with Lepper until the wee hours of the morning. His erudition, in old age, was astonishing. Did these discussions have a big influence on the Oil Tanker? Who would know. But by 2002 Matt was curating shows at the Warhol. Essay, co-authored by Robert Lepper and Philip Rostek, was included in an exhibition called Robert Lepper / Artist and Teacher.

Our thinking at the time of the Labyrinth did not reminisce; it attempted to be contemporary.

And that required the expertise and muscle of many people.

The show was ambitious and such collaborative enterprises were almost expected to fail. We made our deadline. It was not easy but we opened perfectly - dotting i’s and crossing t’s. We had learned the value of positive reinforcement as an empowering agent toward getting things done. An example of that, that pertains to the Oil Tanker specifically, is this note Jim wrote to Matt and i as he was finishing his section of the piece. It is exemplary of the glue that held the overarching and interacting parts together. i framed it not long ago.

We saw ourselves as idealistic and convivial representatives of what a new era could be.

The Labyrinth was perhaps more of a continuation of my grad school days than i care to admit. My graduate thesis, Tailormades, proclaimed that Art had 3 r’s. Ritual, Remnants. and Reminiscing. Remnants remain for me not failures or relics, but what remains after something has been removed. Ritual involves the mutual dependence of the components of a system. (Robert Lepper’s definition of Design.) And Reminiscing is what i am doing now.

I tried to live out those 3 elements while wearing my tails, my art uniform. i tried to re-invent those elements in the Labyrinth show. But the resurrection of the Oil Tanker is more than re-enactment for me. It beckons a search within - for some sense of self.

I had mentioned the term multiple identity in Chapter one. Perhaps the time is right to bring an explanation forward. I will try to do this pictorially as words seem beyond me. I am no match for Walt Whitman’s poetic gifts.

Artist Casting Giacometti shadow , 1972. Photo credit: Roger Dumas.

By the early 80’s i had become “phriar phil.”

Photo credit: Sue Wrbican

After a heart transplant in 2008 i became “philip the transplant.”

Art Attack, 1972 . Photo credit: Marcia Rostek

It is curious to have an extended life. To be alive via a donor’s heart is as surreal as Dali’s Persistence of Memory. This prophetic 1972 photo of a lip stick incision is probably even more strange to me than it is to you. After a heart transplant in 2008, I consider myself to be the ultimate “remnant.”

The Oil Tanker has arrived to see another day due to the convictions and energy and emotional feelings of Sue Wrbican. My doctors at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh have also enabled me to see another day. If Art has 3 r’s it would not surprise me. The ritual of bringing something to life, the phenomenon of recovery, and the opportunity to reminisce about the first two things - has happened to me in life and has happened to me in art. I would like to think my friend Robert Lepper would see beauty in the irony of it all. i would like to think that my friend Bruce Breland would hear the Sound and the Fury once more. i would like to think that Matt and Jim would see our Minotaur defeated. Defeated for perhaps a short time only. But defeated for now. Beyond that is too much to ask.

Myself seeing the Oil Tanker in storage after many years. Photo credit: Sue Wrbican, 2020.

The Oil Tanker (Part One)

Atlantika Collective Member Sue Wrbican's show titled The Iridescent Yonder recently opened at the Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, VA and was reviewed in this space on July 14. During Atlantika's monthly meeting, Sue walked us through the multi-faceted show, which includes photography, painting, and installation. She emphasized that the exhibit was conceived as a response to the tragic loss of both her brother, Matt Wrbican, and her mother within several weeks of each other. In fact, the exhibit centers around a large-scale collaborative painting of an oil tanker created by her brother Matt and two collaborators, Phil Rostek and James Nelson, in 1991. During the walkthrough, we were introduced to Phil, who not only helped us to appreciate the importance of Matt Wrbican's accomplishments, but also regaled us with tales about collaborative efforts the group initiated in the 1980s under the name "DAX," or Digital Art Exchange. Phil's recollections of their joint efforts and the early responses of artists in the 1970s to 1990s to important cultural developments, including the advent of the internet, proved extremely fascinating, and we invited him to elaborate on the very significant "paradigm shift" that he witnessed in art during this period. We hope that this series of posts will not only shed light on innovations in American experimental art during this period, but also flesh out the relevance and significance of Sue's recent work.

by Phil Rostek

The Oil Tanker, a 1991 collaborative work by myself, Matt Wrbican, and Jim Nelson, has seen the light of day after 30 years of storage. Thanks to the energy, commitment, and creativity of artist Sue Wrbican (Matt’s sister), the Oil Tanker now looks like this in the Craddock - Terry Gallery at Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, VA. It enjoys a space within Sue’s exhibit entitled “The Iridescent Yonder."

Detail of The Oil Tanker, Matt Wrbican, Phil Rostek, and James Nelson. Discarded plastic objects, paint and tar, 192” x 72”, 1991.

The Oil Tanker was originally part of a larger presentation exhibited at the then Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, National Gallery. It was funded by the Painted Bride / Philadelphia and also was supported by the formidable commitment of director of exhibitions Mr. Murray Horne. The show was called the Labyrinth and it was a “walk through exhibit” - a kind of inventory of effects that intended to stimulate an observer to ponder speculations about what the world was like and where it might be going. In 1991 those conjectures most likely included many of the same thoughts that still plague us today and still require candor and inquiry, i.e., environmental concerns, sustainable resources, reasonable parameters of digital outreach, and the phenomenon of multiple identity.

The book of contributors to the Labyrinth exhibit (pictured below) included the conviction that, as organizers of the show, Matt and i considered ourselves “stewards,” not authors. The exhibit included a spinning tree and microphone which looped anything that was said into it. It included wise sentences from historical personalities that were scribed by hand as small as possible. Other rooms included audio tapes and lazy boy chairs, references to Shakespeare, the Ancient Greeks, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a video of Lower East Side metal banging in the Rivington Street “sculpture garden.”

Installation views, The Labyrinth, 1991.

The backstory of Oil Tanker is rather integral to a collaborative effort that included 14 artists all in all. The thrust of the exhibit attempted to laud the virtues of what i called “structural collaboration.” Quite simply that referred to my bias that overt process orientation prioritizes the participants - observers are for the most part left alone to untangle impenetrable interaction. The Oil Tanker may provide a good example to make this more clear.

I thought our Labyrinth should have a “Minotaur” and that was, in my opinion, oil and the amount of it that suffered catastrophic spills back then. Matt and i agreed on this and we invited Jim Nelson to help us express something, somehow. By consensus we agreed a tanker in high profile would fit the bill and agreed upon a rough thumb nail sketch. Later there was a separation of input. I did the tarry water, Matt worked inside the outline of the boat, and Jim painted a background setting.

Here’s me with the initial idea.

Phil Rostek standing with the original concept drawing for The Oil Tanker, 1991.

Here’s Jim Nelson painting in the background, which evoked The Gulf War. I met Jim at Carnegie Mellon University in 1971. Our graduate student studios were in the basement of the Margaret Morrison Building on campus. We remain very close friends to this day. I’m pictured also - touching up the tar at the bottom of the painting.

Jim Nelson and Phil Rostek creating The Oil Tanker in 1991.

And here is the creativity of Matt Wrbican who saved oil based products for months and then organized them from thin to high dimension within the hull of the Tanker. Neither i nor Jim was expecting the passion that Matt brought to the project; but i was not surprised then nor am i now. Matt Wrbican was a unique and stellar talent.

Plastic (petroleum-based) objects collected by Matt Wrbican for use in the creation of The Oil Tanker, 1991.

There is something ineffable about my experience in Lynchburg. It haunts me in ways that evoke, or perhaps better, reawaken the aspirations of The Labyrinth. Seeing the Oil Tanker but not seeing Matt was telling. The Labyrinth exhibition coincided with the retirement of my mentor and Matt’s mentor - Bruce Breland. I studied with Bruce as a grad student at CMU 1971 to 73. We did mail art and concept pieces together. i had given up lyrical painting and opted to wear white tie and tails to school every day. I was also studying with Robert Lepper - a teacher of Andy Warhol. Between Lepper and Breland is a volatile and heady place to be. Each had a keen sense of the absurd, and at the same time, each had a keen penchant for very pragmatic thinking. Both liked Duchamp. My leanings toward Fluxus would later inform my thinking when i wrote theory for Bruce Breland’s DAX Group (Digital Art Exchange) in the 80’s.

Phil Rostek, from a photograph by Bruce Breland, 1973.

It was in the 80’s that i met Matt Wrbican. Matt was then a grad student working with Bruce in coursework called “intermedia.” During the decade of the 80’s the DAX Group contributed to many distributed authorship pieces during the early days of the internet. La Plissure du Texte 1983, a text exchange organized by Roy Ascott comes to mind - as do contributions to Network Planetario / Laboratorio Ubique at the Venice Biennale 1986.

By the end of the decade Matt was working at the Carnegie Museum of Art during the installation of a Carnegie International, archiving Breland’s legacy at CMU, and doing the Labyrinth show with me -all at the same time. It was stressful for Matt but he succeeded in doing it all. He was, very shortly afterward, hired by the Warhol Museum as an archivist in charge of moving work from Warhol’s factory to Pittsburgh. Matt is identified with the Warhol time capsules as well acknowledged as one of the foremost authorities about the life and art of Andy Warhol in the world. That is not an overstatement.

As i step back now and think about the volatility of those times; i cannot say that i have much to contribute to the understanding of it all. Great turmoil was let loose when “the individual was replaced by the collective’” via technological innovations; innovations that spawned an unprecedented acceleration of information. Information speed-up continues to shape the world and the people who live on it. The relationship between art and life seemed obvious when NYC was a center. The very notion of a center continues to fade into a horizontal world that runs flat. The Labyrinth tried to anticipate what future existence would be, and the Oil Tanker was something that seemed necessary to avoid and replace.

More installation views of The Labyrinth exhibit, 1991.

It seems that having one foot in a national world and one foot in a global one - is a chasm that has not narrowed but widened.

As science takes the place of art and religion, one area seems impervious to any form of apprehension. If i could replace the Oil Tanker in today’s Labyrinth, if i could speculate about Minotaurs today, i would offer this. The one area where there has been no “progress” or even significant conjecture is: an understanding of what consciousness actually is. We know it’s what disappears under anesthesia, but we don’t know much more than that. Science would deny that dead things have it at all. But when it is present as a combination of multi-sensory experience and flux - what we commonly call life - it seems to avoid science’s favorite word: “someday.”

It is curious when the notion of “what” is eclipsed by the notion of “how.” Hyper-individualistic living begins to fear time itself. Humility becomes obsolete. A culture, or the tribal equivalent of it, comes to think that time can be reversed and, moreover, that it can be reversed in the spirit of righteousness. The effect of information overload does not see the imminent dangers of the present; it ironically draws obsessive attention to the past. Somewhere in the meat of the brain there is a capacity to recall times that have gone by - but in today’s culture this can only be noticed in the context of the present.

What do contemporary people do when eternity itself has become a thing of the past? That is what i felt when i saw the Oil Tanker after all these years. That faint glimmer of who i used to be seemed unusually informative. That feeling is connected to the elusive charms of what we call, for lack of a better term, art.