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Robert Irwin's "9 Spaces, 9 Trees"
Like the coelacanth (or the Son of God, depending on your religious beliefs), Robert Irwin’s “9 Spaces, 9 Trees” rises from the dead!
But, is it still the same display of the avant-garde or a soulless reproduction riding the coattails of nostalgia? Irwin’s “9 Spaces, 9 Trees” (1983) originally installed in the plaza in front of Seattle’s Public Safety Building, was taken down in 2001 concurrently with the demolition of the building. Preservation efforts landed Irwin’s influential work on a grassy patch of underutilized land within the University of Washington campus in Seattle.
A short unauthorized biography on the piece begins in the 1980’s at the height of the environmental art era when artists were leaving the white walls of the gallery to experiment with art in the real world. Words like land-art and earthworks were being thrown around like neon NERF footballs and Maverick-Goose flipside high fives.
Irwin’s exploration of site specificity in his work led him to many important works of the 1970s and 80s. “9 Spaces, 9 Trees” was claimed to be one of those site-generated works by Irwin. Sited in a public plaza of Seattle’s Public Safety building, the original light blue screening contrasted sharply with the urban grey of downtown Seattle. Although important in the art world for its play with light and space, the piece was unpopular with public safety employees and other users of the plaza who interpreted the 9 spaces defined by chainlinked mesh as an allegory for the incarceration cells of the Public Safety building that it fronted. Ultimately, the plaza was sealed off from the public when the building entrance that Irwin’s piece guarded was closed in favor of a controlled central entrance on the other side of the building.
Now that “9 Spaces, 9 Trees” has been nostalgically restored to the public realm, it evokes many questions leading back to Irwin’s ideas of site-determined art. Are we supposed to view “9 Spaces, 9 Trees” version 2.0 as the same work that briefly graced the public realm 25 years ago? Was it wise for Irwin -- who once did not allow photographic reproductions of his work because he felt photographs do not record the phenomena of his pieces -- to try to recreate his acclaimed work? The original had, at least to my mind, achieved near mythical status because of the sparsity of depictions of the piece in circulation and the folkloric verbal recounts of those who had been there.
Does the reworking meet the promise of the original? I think not. Experiencing it in its new location, I perceived and odd sense of insincerity… Maybe this was because it was sited in an awkward space behind the undergraduate library, or maybe because the color of the scrims were changed from the original pale blue to a dark purple (purple being-- perhaps not coincidentally -- the school color of the Washington Huskies). I couldn’t help but feel that I was witnessing another George-Lucas-ing of a classic (as when Lucas meddled with his original Star Wars). Is this a genuine effort by Irwin to rework “9 Spaces” into the specificity of its new home or just another piece of art becoming a victim of nostalgic preservation? Visit and decide for yourself.