Anne Speier and Lucie Stahl at What Pipeline, Detroit

Somewhere in an industrial wasteland, a new dialect is emerging. On the border, objects whisper to each other in the fortified chamber of the gallery, isolated from the surrounding city’s chaos. Inside is a mix of vibrant photographic prints, paintings, and sculptures, accompanied by a short text about the work and its concepts, such as driving, consumerism, and late-capitalist dystopia. In addition to the engrossing nature of the individual pieces, the open-endedness of the installation allows for infinite interpretations. The exhibition, entitled “House Set Sun” is a collaboration by German artists Anne Speier and Lucie Stahl, who have both previously been featured at What Pipeline, an artist-run gallery in Southwest Detroit that has been showing contemporary art for the past decade.

        After stepping inside What Pipeline, one is immediately greeted by a huge photographic print of layered color gradients. Stahl’s Rear View 5 is boldly postured, front-and-center in the gallery, and sturdily mounted on a thick industrial steel frame. The print is accompanied by five similar images of identical size, dispersed throughout the space on frames as well as on the walls. At first glance, it is unclear exactly what process was used in the creation of the prints. The abstract smudges and dust seem to suggest color negative film or blown-up slides, while the meticulous, clean placement of the small inner rectangles on the canvas is indicative of a precision that can only be achieved through the intervention of a machine. Further research into Stahl’s previous works will show that these prints do not utilize film at all—rather the artist uses a scanner in combination with various materials and found objects to make the images, which are then digitally layered together. The moody compositions allude to the act of driving and escapism and possess a disorienting lack of spatial coordinates that suggests fantasy, or a vision from a dream. It’s as if they are suspended in a parallel world, enmeshed between the virtual and the visceral.

         Several paintings and two large sculptures fabricated by Stahl’s collaborator, Speier, are also on display in conjunction with the prints. Near the front of the gallery, Curio Guy, a tall anthropomorphic figure built from wire and a domestic display case, and sporting a shingle hat, coolly stands by the side wall, the multi-faceted mirror of his torso providing a distorted reflection of the passersby. His counterpart, Vitrine Guy, guards the back of the room with a direct head-on gaze (minus the eyes). The monotone sculpture tames the space, bringing in a comforting domesticity that playfully tests the barriers between the prestigious white cube and the common everyday object. These grandiose assemblages resemble old folk art and help ground the tone of the show in a familiar visual language, while boldly adding three-dimensionality to the otherwise two-dimensional presentation.

        Seven medium-sized paintings by Speier are hung throughout the installation and depict a range of representational symbols including many houses, nuns, cherubs, and select words taken out of supermarket ads, such as “MEGA” and “EXTRA FRESH!” There is a visible difference in the variety of surface textures among the paintings, for example, between the thick, expressive application, and painterly aesthetic of works such as Crusty House,  compared to Mega. In the latter, the crisp edges of its parts liken it more to a traditional cut-and-paste collage. Two of the houses are shown as dirty, dilapidated, and unsafe, while Mega gives an unobstructed view of a clean, blank interior, like an open, empty dollhouse. In Bluehouse, the subject is doubled, with one house appearing blurry, floating in a lavender haze, and the other directly below it, wearing shoes amid a colorful surreal scene.

        In dialogue with Speier’s repeated house image is Stahl’s conceptual focus on the car, via distorted ambient landscapes shown through a rearview mirror. The suggested reflections prompt thoughts on the essence of the vehicle and how it houses the body, both shielding and endangering it while acting as a vessel for our superpowered movement—it propels us forward through life—a tool for enhanced speed and efficiency. These focal themes—the car and the house—are as mundane as they are necessary for survival in contemporary society.

        Similarly, the repetition of religious imagery, specifically nuns, is common throughout Speier’s portfolio, and may serve as an allusion to the systems used to organize people and keep them docile (i.e., religion: the opiate of the masses). The ubiquitous nun imagery and the sense of virtue it evokes, coyly and somewhat whimsically, shares space with the viewer from the elevated sanctuary of the frame, content in its own inevitable salvation.

        The emotions activated by the exhibition are vast, touching on loaded subjects of home, escapism, consumerism, and religion. The works fully fill the space of the gallery and envelop the viewer—the result is a sensation of smallness. Perhaps it taps into a particular conflict of the psyche, triggered by the stark contrast between the depictions of home and those of the road, the persistent struggle between the familiar and the unknown, of comfort versus thrill and the need to get away, to feel something new. From a different perspective, the work conceptually romanticizes the sense of déjà vu that characterizes modern existence. It provokes a reassessment of the methods we use in our sensory intake of the everyday by fragmenting and reconstituting common materials and symbols into these new, hybridized meditative forms.

        What Pipeline has exhibited works by artists from Detroit as well as other parts of the world since 2013 and has participated in several art fairs. This show ran from April 8th to May 27th, 2023.

Marissa Jezak (b.1992, Harrison Township, MI) is an artist and writer based in Detroit. She earned a BFA in photography and critical theory from the College for Creative Studies in 2014. Marissa Jezak’s writing has been featured in publications such as Detroit Research and Runner, and she has exhibited artworks internationally. Her ongoing research focuses on illness, trauma, and gender politics.