Anything but stable are these miss-matched and hodgepodged items of bottles, pitchers, pears, brackets, rope, stumps, trees, and building facades. The way the sky expands into the horizon makes the whole work look as though it is on the edge of a cliff.
What recontextualizes the entire tableau is a rather conspicuous question mark to the right of view. It almost frames the entire scene as if to ask, “What is this?”
Indeed, what is this? Everything is recognizable yet in disarray, unenterable and broken. The work makes what is familiar unfamiliar. It serves and exemplifies a useful aspect of art which is its “uselessness”, much as these items have become, in order to recontextualize our world or what we know and remind us to stop for a minute and ask, “What is it”?
Caroline Staller (Guest Writer),
BAK a Day, September 20, 2023
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After our in depth and transformational excursion to Alabama all of Bak’s works seem even more poignant and pertinent to our present and our heinous past in this country.
When Bak is described as Polish, Lithuanian, Israeli and American Artist who survived the Holocaust one can say Dayenu - it is more than enough and yet he could also be described as a Universal artist whose art records our misdeeds and beckons us to repair all of the damage.
His art continues to address our world. Alabama proved to be incredibly disturbing. The Museums and Archives and Institutes for Memory and Justice are plentiful and exceptionally well done. The Legacy Museum, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the various National Park Service sites including Tuskegee are all well done. Yet the encounters one on one with the foot soldiers in the march or those who crossed the Pettis Bridge or those working tirelessly for the equality of every person shone brightly in our spirits and memories.
Stable Landscape is another visual witness to the incredible destruction of habitations as well as the survival of Still Life objects albeit fragmented.
The merger of the pitcher with the bottle whose handle is the ever present question mark. The central structure with a wooden bottle im-peared by the segmented pear in the central foreground position. All some how attached by the suspended branch. The third house like structure with a reunion of the still life objects
Pear
Pitcher
Bottle
The trinity arrayed in the landscape of memory. Is there a sense of stability with these witnesses to what others have done? How do we react to this brokenness? Is more repair possible?
The realization that we have all been alive for the oppression and intimidation for the American Genocide. The book, "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas A. Blackmon, effectively records these on going atrocities. The upcoming election is another terrifying moment as the forces of untruth and denial loom. We must act now and going forward to reclaim Stable Landscape.
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