"On Air" Needs More Wind in Its Sails

Wind is a powerful force known to all of us. Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis’ collaboration “On Air,” at Pittsburgh's 820 Liberty Gallery, attempts to harness that power and form it into art. The space for the project is appropriately open, airy, and inviting. The single, tall-ceilinged room houses a collection of kinetic pieces still with potential for movement. A set of long, gauzy curtains simply drapes for now. A sky-high anemometer measures zero windspeed. Shimmering silver streamers spill from an exposed piece of ductwork, begging for an air current to send them dancing. At the moment, the only motion in the room comes from the sounds and sights of a longform compilation of film snippets featuring wind. Clayton and Lewis note that they intend to play with both the absence and invisible presence of wind. As I stand in the stillness of the gallery, though, I wonder if the absence overtakes the presence of these pieces, even when they do eventually come to life.

I find myself glancing around the single gallery room for more. Is this everything? I even pull my phone out to check the exhibit description, which mentions an “air-activated tabletop sculpture.” How have I missed that? There’s only so much to see. I grapple with the feeling of being let down as I focus on the only piece speaking at the moment: I let “The Wind” take me, in all its dynamic, building movement between gentle breezes and hurricane-force gales. This piece is easy to lose yourself in, easy to slip into an almost meditative state as you sit before its ever-changing anthology. As I muse that there must be something here about unmet expectations and embracing the moments that follow them – the AC comes on, and the gallery is propelled into motion.

I’m thrilled to see that mass of sparkles spilling from the air duct moving now, trembling and shimmering like old-school TV static. The bulbs atop the anemometer are spinning, the tippy top of the long, skinny pole just swaying in the breeze. And the curtains, with their soaring height, are breathtaking in their gentle motion. I discover the elusive tabletop sculpture, too: a stack of fliers with media blurbs and artist statements about “On Air” xeroxed onto them in abstract layers. The stack is held down by a paperweight, which I am invited by a gallery attendant to lift and see if a fan sends any of the pages spiraling across the room (sadly, it doesn’t – save for one that flutters to the ground in anticlimax). I’m disappointed not to see a bigger reaction, but  delighted by the prospect, and relieved to know there is more life here than when I entered.

Still – even after seeing “On Air” in motion, a sense of lack lingers. I want to see more. This exhibit was created in parallel with Clayton & Lewis’ installation “A Sudden Gust of Wind” (a series of kite sculptures “caught” in trees throughout downtown) and I want to see if I can find some pieces to help build context. I head out into the street, eyes peeled for sculptures, to discover – I’ve parked right under one of them. A few pops of red and yellow kites stick out from the high branches, but among full summer foliage, they’re easy to miss. There are plenty more kite-hosting trees on Liberty Avenue, I find – but there’s only a handful of (rather small) kites per tree, and the fact they’re difficult to spot means nothing immediately says “art installation.” They could all be mistaken for the mere aftermath of a hobby-gone-wrong. It’s the same feeling again: I want more.

Clayton and Lewis walk a high-wire of opposites in these projects: absence versus presence, joy versus defeat. I’m thankful I got to see “On Air” in motion – if I’d grown impatient and left five minutes earlier, my impression would be vastly different. There’s a clever, albeit risky, play there: how many people came into 820 Liberty while stationary and left before any wind kicked up? How many are walking around thinking “On Air” is all stillness and stagnancy? “A Sudden Gust of Wind” toes the same precarious line, with the feeling of letdown intentionally baked in: the artists’ statement wants viewers to consider the joy kites can bring, as well as “the sense of disappointment when they cease to function.” Playing with these concepts through the medium of an unseeable force of nature is a bold move, a brilliant idea. But when absence and disappointment are at the center of your work’s message, there’s a chance of leaving your audience with just that: disappointment.

It's a tall challenge for a pair of public artworks, and I’m not sure the challenge has been met. How do you balance the playfulness of kite-flying, the evocative experience of being-with a piece of art, and the very real feeling of failure? How do you stir your audience’s imagination through stillness? How do you draw attention to absence without the art feeling absent? Insofar as the artists hoped to draw on these sensations, they were successful; but I can’t imagine letdown was supposed to be at the forefront of my experience. Reading the prospectus beforehand, I wanted to be thrilled by these projects. But like one unacclimated to a high altitude environment, I instead found myself reaching, gasping, for the next breath of air. What next? What more? And that may be the missing ingredient: more.

The exhibits did leave me with my imagination churning: I envisioned them both pushed to their limits. Trees absolutely packed with kites suspended in stillness, impossible to miss, impossible to interpret as mere accident. Multiple tabletop sculptures placed in a hall, unobtrusive until they catch a current, sending fliers whirling throughout the room. Instead of a single air duct stuffed with streamers, an entire wall of them in motion together (or at odds – perhaps one single duct is dancing a solo while the others wait their turn).  It may be that what “On Air” suffers most from is the wrong space: it needs more room to roam and spread its wings. There is so much playfulness and potential there that its current form feels too small to fulfill its task. Give it a bigger space, and we can really see things motion, really witness the power of that invisible force of nature.

These projects are not bad by any means – not poorly conceptualized or constructed, certainly not lacking in imagination – but they feel like humble beginnings of a much grander undertaking. “On Air” is described as an expansion of the artists’ interest in wind “as both a material and a process,” and it’s one I hope they keep playing with. This idea has the potential to truly blow viewers away with more power, more balance, with both meditative peacefulness and overblown intensity. It can highlight presence and absence without leaving us hung too much in the middle. May we get to see where the wind takes Clayton & Lewis next.

“A Sudden Gust of Wind” can be found throughout downtown Pittsburgh through March of 2025.