Broken Collages Capture the
Secret Lives of Things

Charles Platt’s exhibition encrypted messages at Freight+Volume gallery uses personal things to reconstruct a narrative, or at least parts of a story through which a life might be glimpsed.

Seph Rodney     February 23, 2017

The fiction writer Harlan Ellison once wrote a description of an imaginary chair so well constructed to suit the human form that an alien race that had never seen a human in the flesh might be able to correctly construct a body using only the chair as a guide. It’s an intriguing idea for me: to see ourselves through the objects, to use them to construct or reconstruct a version of ourselves. We certainly do that historically. That’s what time capsules are for. They are caches of select objects that are supposed to be so intimately bound up in what a group of people does that they become identifiable through these objects, so that another group might formulate an account of how they lived and were meaningful to each other and themselves. But to communicate our sundry and diverse abilities, desires, and stories, you have to have more than a chair. To convey our complex experiences, you might need a lot of things.

Charles Platt’s new solo exhibition, encrypted messages at Freight+Volume gallery uses personal things to reconstruct a narrative, or at least parts of a story through which a life might be glimpsed. He collages broken vinyl records, leather wallets, paper shooting targets, trousers, dresses, jackets, shoes, wire hangers, US money, sunglasses, gloves, wood, metal mouse traps, and the cardboard packaging of baby powder. These objects are all cut open and splayed, fixed to a substrate as if pressed between two layers of transparent glass, as if inviting the viewer to examine them in detail, like sandwiching a drop of blood in a specimen slide to see what is really going on below the surface.

The work isn’t precisely nostalgic, though it has touches of warm, crinkly feelings, like the piece, “Blood, Bones and Healing Devices” (2001), in which the story of a car accident is told bit by bit through torn clothing stained with blood (his own shirt, the gallery attendant tells me), a walking cane, parts of a medical brace, car keys, broken eyeglasses, and other pieces of shattered glass. The composition moves from the left edge to the right like a concussive wave had passed through an idyllic scene and tossed everything into the air and let it smash down without a care.

The front of the exhibition contains mostly static compositions, the clothing and objects lain down as if arranged for a snapshot. But Platt gets exciting when he places these personal items in such relation to each other that a story is strongly implied. He surprises me more with “Re-union” (2000), where the objects become abstract from a distance of a few feet; the abstraction moves my eyes in and out of the work’s depths, like being pulled on a leash. Similarly, in “Going Nowehere” (2003), which reminds even more than “Re-union” of the Italian futurists, diagonal compositions surge forward, sending the shoes and clothes hangers up and out of the work, sailing on the parcels of fabric caught in a wind I cannot feel, but nevertheless see the evidence of.

Platt has his own backstory that makes for a curious read. He was for many years a successful architect, but kept making these collages, which he began in 1959. According to the gallery’s press, he left oil painting after returning to his studio to find a pair of overalls hanging on his work. He realized that the most quotidian objects when placed in proximal relationships had resonance in a way he could explore for decades. Many of the works do read as post-war, American, modernist explorations, but they also read as tiny stories with unresolved endings.

Charles Platt’s encrypted messages continues at Freight + Volume
(97 Allen Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through February 26.

Collages: a Series of Works by Charles A. Platt

By Carinda Swann
Director/Curator, Garrison Art Center Galleries
January, 2010

Artist Charles A. Platt is a noted architect based out of New York City, who has received many meritorious awards in the field since receiving his architectural degree from Harvard. It comes as no surprise that in his fine art collages Platt “builds” his pieces. Even though the works are wall pieces and technically considered two-dimensional, they are made up of items that once were -- and in many ways still are -- three-dimensional. An architect is in the business of making three-dimensional objects out of two-dimensional materials. In Platt’s collages, he does just the opposite, literally de-constructing objects that find their way into his studio until nearly unrecognizable in their abstracted states.

“I take apart clothes and find and re-work used objects – shoes and shirts, phonograph records, summer skirts, measuring tapes and rifle targets, tennis nets, wallets and so forth – and work them into compositions that depend on formal artistic expression and meaning. The nature of the object itself, the material, its color, texture, shape, construction and the associations it evokes play a central role, as do the possibilities of its history.”

In much of his work Platt seeks to lay open items in a way that reveals a story; however, that narrative, although enticing, is not necessary to the visual enjoyment of the work. The expertly planned compositions, the juxtaposition of texture, color and pattern are what sets Platt’s work apart, along with their grand scale and the complexities that present themselves the longer one looks. The large scale of the pieces is dictated primarily by the fact that most of the items included are human scale, and most all of the objects relate in some way to human beings.

It gradually dawns on the viewer just how personal these mostly abstract pieces are, made up of remnants of a life laid bare for all to scrutinize, and while a first glance brings a smile, further study brings a heartbeat and the understanding that there are no certain answers here. The artist tells his stories matter-of-factly, and the viewer slowly realizes that it is not at all clear whether this is a pleasant accounting or a traumatic tale.

One thing does become quickly certain, that the objects within these pieces were once a part of a life, the clothes and shoes protected a body, as did the cut-apart safety vest. The tennis net was no doubt slammed by thousands of errant balls, and the silk stockings caressed a woman’s leg. The mouse trap used as an executioner’s aid has been promoted to an artist’s medium, and the dog tags once hung around a neck – the artist’s in fact. Some art is just beautiful to look at, some is provocative, some historic, some daring. Platt’s work is simultaneously accomplished, visually dramatic and quietly unnerving -- a distinct combination for survival.