Jacob Montelongo Martinez
AKA Monte / Collaborating Artist
Eric Martinez
Zeitgeist Gallery
Through February 24, 2007

A work of art can serve as a transportative experience – carrying the viewer into a realm created by the artist and the viewer’s engagement. 555’s Monte accomplishes this almost literally with his installation show that completely transforms the Zeitgeist gallery space. Just the experience of walking into somewhere you’ve been before, and having it take on this new identity would be interesting, but Monte has filled this with imagery and curiosities that demand great exploration.

Upon entering the main gallery, we find the gallery’s brick walls concealed by large sheets of painted cardboard, mounted flat in some areas and painted white, but primarily black and curved on wooden ribbing supports concealed behind them. The wall to the left of the entrance gently cascades extending into the space and rolling back to the original wall collapsing the room a bit.

From this entrance onward, space is warped and reconfigured, and Monte has filled it with subtle and complex passages. It’s clear that he’s a collector of stuff, and much that he’s gathered over the years has been packed into this. In a way, we might think of this as entering the labyrinth of the artist’s mind, an appropriate metaphor which is reinforced strongly towards the finale of the experience.

In this first space, below the curving black walls is a skeleton with leering, lyrical grin, riding atop a wagon complete with unfurled sail, perhaps a stand-in for Charon, the ferryman on the River Styx, which separates the real world from the underworld. This makeshift ferry boat of sorts contains a box of trinkets, payment for safe passage. Not only do the walls curve and close in to suggest a cavernous underground passage, but Monte has added shaped sections of carpeting to the floor to reinforce the imagery of a river winding through the space.

The walls not only become space but subtle image in places. The flat white cardboard wall to the right becomes a vertically oriented silhouette of a city and moon, which interlocks with the continuation of the wall in wood scraps and packing crate sides.

Below this is another mode of transport, a girl’s bicycle (it’s pink), with a pair of adult shoes where the rider would put his/her feet on the ground. The shoes reinforce the absence of the rider and evoke a certain sadness. On the floor, Monte’s traced the contour of the shadow of the bike with colored bits of tape, a delightfully complex image, made more so with additional wandering paths, perhaps a mapping of meandering ride on this bicycle. On closer inspection the tape bits are all labels for various antipsychotic drugs, building deeper layers of meaning into an already deeply laden image.

The tape path climbs up the curved wall, which is itself adorned with newspaper clippings, sketches, cartoons, maps, and more – it’s not quite random, as through the reading of this imagery the social perspective of the artist begins to emerge. And here the space squeezes tight, as both side walls curve far outward, the passage between is a bit claustrophobic. This recalls the garbage compactor in the original Star Wars or perhaps a Richard Serra installation, where the viewer cautiously treads between two seemingly off balance curved steel walls.

Emerging through this area we come across a mummy in burlap, displayed hanging from the ceiling within a cage of curved wood. Hundreds of keys hang from its form – perhaps to open doors in this underworld? To unlock a room closed off in our mind? The figure’s face is uncovered, a striking visage, and altogether this makes for a haunting and quite beautiful sight.

The back wall of the gallery has a few cartoonish raw paintings of young street toughs, and while interesting enough on their own, they seem to take away from the overall lyrical, mythological quality of the installation. It’s a brief moment, as Monte has filled the inner wall with opened black pouches, their interior bottoms laid with Astroturf. Three suitcases sit on the floor, while four mannequin feet are put within a pouch each, appearing to ascend these makeshift steps. The suitcases and feet reinforce the notion of the traveler, this journey steadily being constructed.

We roll around the corner and inward to an alcove lit only with black light. We can make out a bull – with glow in the dark markings upon it to make it visible. Hanging precariously above it, poised to drop on its neck, is a pointed object suspended by a string, which crisscrosses through the space terminating on a wall with a playful rocketship drawn in glow in the dark ink. Yet another means of travel. There is a good deal more crammed within this space – much of it hard to make out (while illuminating it with the camera flash makes it visible, it also removes most of what makes it so engaging.) On the ceiling are two prints of labyrinths and resting on the floor two paintings of butterflies. It’s doubtful that any of these items are placed coincidentally and all have mythological connotations (there’s even a golden fleece). For the term labyrinth comes from the Minoan word for “double axe”, which also has come to signify butterfly. In that most famous of labyrinths, that half-bull creature the Minotaur was trapped. Some see the labyrinth as a symbol for our rational mind constructed to contain our more animalistic aspect. Even the string plays a vital role in mythology, a tool of reason and a literal tool given to Theseus by Ariadne with which to find his way out of the maze after slaying the beast.

Having traveled through the bowels of mythology our journey is nearly finished and now takes us to outer space. The glow in the dark rocketship points outward towards and is echoed in appearance by a curved cylindrical form running from floor to ceiling. The floor painted bright at its base to suggest blast off. Inside its soft clear plastic windows hangs a globe, dark and half covered in black, and a single bullet resting on this encasement’s bottom all lit sparsely and cleverly from within. It’s a powerful, somber finale, speaking to our potential as travelers and that which stops us short.

There is much more that could be mentioned. Each area is marked off with some type of literature hung on the wall nearby. This includes a stunningly imaginative and complexly drawn pamphlet discussing the effects of the United States interests in Colombia with an analogy of leaf cutter ants. Fascinating stuff. (www.beehivecollective.org.) Some are poetry, one espouses the benefits of graffiti, and one warns of the dangers of storing nuclear waste. Again, Monte is compounding the layers of meaning in each region and throughout the whole.

There is one additional area – a mural created by his collaborator and cousin Eric Martinez. It’s wildly complex imagery of richly detailed dragon (a symbol of chaos) and cityscape all curving together with a bridge that literally comes off of the walls. A woman’s portrait could be an up-to-date version of lady liberty. Mounted on that wall is a document carried by US soldiers in Operation Desert Storm asking for safe passage in a number of languages of the region. All of these elements too, speak to a journey.

Monte’s created a truly engaging overall experience – one that the viewer can get lost in as if in a labyrinth and in exploring, continually coming upon new information and discoveries with each pass. It’s quite an achievement and definitely not one to be missed. (If you need added encouragement to get there, there will be a closing party Saturday, February 24th from 7 to Midnight. I recommend checking it out on your own as well, to truly spend time absorbed with this work.) – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com