Instruments of Agency (iOA) — Recent Work x Steve Sas Schwartz

Instruments of Agency

On The Recent Work Of Steve Sas Schwartz by Mat Gleason

The lockdown and subsequent pandemic fallout did not slow down the artistic output of Steven Allan Schwartz aka SAS. Two of his recent series epitomize his tendency to fall into an authentic space of expression. His art ties together impulses the culture at large is feeling long before others can articulate where we are going. From the look of it, SAS is telling us in two recent series that the ordinary object could at any time be a praiseworthy relic worthy of our adoration and one that embodies the emotive space where any break from its place in the natural order is a cause for mourning. After what the world collectively went through in 2020 and 2021, SAS seems to be placing a collective faith in random things as a way of sanctifying the most mundane of our daily activities. Forget these ordinary things and we lose connectivity to the world’s wider consciousness.

Duchamp would argue that a readymade object can be contextualized as art as-is, that its placement in a gallery and the affirmation of an artist are all that is needed for the transformation to take place. In his “Instruments of Agency” series, Steve Sas Schwartz argues that evidence of the artist must not only be present, it must serve as the fundamental transformative lightning striking the object. When SAS paints a rhythmic stripe pattern onto a paddle or a propeller, he is challenging certain hierarchical assumptions about the nature of art as much or more than Duchamp did, but he is doing it in a way that exalts the role of the artist whereas Duchamp bowed toward the altar of the concept.

There is, however, a direct inspiration for these perfectly transformed object-into-art-object paintings. The Polish-born Andre Cadere (1934 -1978) made brightly-colored walking sticks with the same sort of striped pattern that SAS favors. Whereas Duchamp wanted ordinary objects worshiped within gallery walls as art, Cadere made simple art objects that he carried with him wherever he went, remarkable and ordinary in one breath. Remarkable as an art object when left in a gallery alone these poles have the same minimal presence as a John McCracken plank with the patterning of a Daniel Buren SAS amplifies the concerns of Duchamp by using oars and propellers, basic everyday objects (although there is an irony that propellers were anything but mundane in the heyday of Duchamp’s Dada) and making them serious aesthetic explorations. The colors of the SAS “Instruments of Agency” are much more sensual than those of Cadere and here he could be seen as the heir to a different art tradition and one from the United States. SAS brings the striped color field explorations of Gene Davis to their next, higher incarnation. Davis was a contemporary of Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis and was a well-ensconced member of the Washington DC-based color field movement. SAS takes the patterned colored stripes of Davis, composes them on mundane objects in a manner consistent with Cadere and exalts them as Duchamp insisted.

The title of the series, “Instruments of Agency”, demands we first understand and accept the power of these things, the utilitarian concept of what good they are. SAS then subverts these notions by transforming them into beautiful art objects with a pedigree of influence from recent art history spanning the globe. Whereas one could in theory re-transform a Duchamp readymade back into its mundane functional purpose, SAS ensures that the objects he alters can no longer be considered oars, propellers, etc. The metamorphosis is complete and unchangeable. What was once an oar is now a painting as much as what was once a caterpillar is now a butterfly. Their heritage defines their nature as an instrument, but their transformation by the artist delivers their agency. 

sAsArT Incoming

2024, wood, steel, plastic, acrylic, velvet, dollar bills, vintage Lionel trains, 84” x 102” x 10”

Panels from L to R —> • Reaper 240, 2024, acrylic on velvet on masonite, 48” x 24” • Quantum Entanglement, 2024, acrylic on velvet on masonite, 48” x 24” • Cargo Ship (sAsArT Delivery), 2024, acrylic on velvet on wood, 48” x 24” • Mind Virus (thoughts are contagions), 2024, acrylic on velvet on masonite, 48” x 24”(in total painting is 4’ x 8’)