Triffid Park in Brooklyn
Mike Ballou, Jay and Pea, 2020, rebar, epoxy and acrylic, dimensions variable. Installation images courtesy of the author.
We see the inexplicable as proof of the divine, and so much of our culture revolves around a yearning to discover traces of something out of the ordinary: angelic and ghostly sightings, extraterrestrial visitors, Atlantis, the list stretches on. Mike Ballou’s semi-secret works at the western entrance to Cooper Park in East Williamsburg are a much-needed invocation of the supernatural. Like most alien interventions that are in fact produced by humans, these twisting and growing forms are vaguely recognizable, but foreign enough that they attract notice and observation. They are like the slow-moving, looming, deadly, but sweetly goofy carnivorous plants of the film The Day of the Triffids (1962). Sturdy tentacular and vegetal stalks of Ultramarine — in actuality epoxy-covered rebar — emerge from the dirt and wind around the trunks of nearby Redbud (Cercis canadensis) trees. Unlike the soft greens, dull gray-browns and ochres of the proximal natural forms, the blue tendrils absorb the diffuse light under the canopy of leaves and attract the eye with an alluring velvety texture.
Mike Ballou, Jay and Pea, 2020, rebar, epoxy and acrylic, dimensions variable. Installation images courtesy of the author.
Imagine if a textbook on aesthetics had been substituted for Darwin’s Origin of the Species as an explanation of life’s variety. Ballou’s life forms seem to have evolved from mutations based on ideals of composition and color coordination rather than how best to commandeer limited resources in the wild. They hover around their host trees in a visual symbiotic pairing and, like a meticulously choreographed ballet, they weave and knot around their living partner — but never touch. To the left of the entrance gate of Cooper Park, the blue form snakes upwards, circumambulates through the low branches of a gnarled overgrown shrub, and then returns back to the ground. On the right hand of the gate, the second organism darts upwards, sharply angles into the midst of its companion tree and, after a few twists and turns, again angles upwards to the sky, this time without returning. It is as if these two entities themselves studied vines, ivies, strangler figs, and other climbing plants, and are trying to mimic them without quite understanding what the goal is: sunlight, nutrients, shade, etc. It’s a marvelous approximation of life — something that marks much of Ballou’s work, from his spinning projections and cutouts to his biomorphic sculptures and installations.
Mike Ballou, Jay and Pea, 2020, rebar, epoxy and acrylic, dimensions variable. Installation images courtesy of the author.
The artist has pointed out that these sculptures are bare and empty without interacting with their living counterparts. From one perspective, they are an event rather than an object. The combinations of textures — the solidity of the flowing pieces contrasts with the dusty particulate dirt of the ground; the semi-gloss surface of the epoxy against the crackly dry bark of the tree, and the healthy growth of leaves that obscure the full view of the object. The intricacy of the no-touch pas de deux can’t be conceived until you move around the amalgamation of forms. But take a few steps back and these two forms become a drawing. The winding wiry lines no longer have dimensionality. The thick trunk and the dark blue line are diagrams of irregular paths plotted on an inscrutable topography. Sometimes they close and become a discreet object, other times they are open-ended, a math problem hidden in the border plantings of a park.
Maquette for Jay and Pea, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist
These are guerilla works, planted at night and seemingly — for now — tolerated by the groundskeepers. As we know from science fiction, as well as basic gardening, invasive species must be watched and kept in check — everyone is curious if they will spread or bear fruit. So far, Ballou’s two organisms seem content to observe their redbud twins and remain immobile and infertile. They are harbingers of an exhibition at Studio 10 at 56 Bogart, to be scheduled when the world returns to a state of semi-functionality. But for now, when it’s safe to be distant and remain outdoors, these objects are not just a new life form but a different and subtler gallery-less and museum-less art form.
