Better homogeny and gardens

>> Obsessing over The American Lawn at CCA

by KEITH MARCHAND

Even more so than Dad wearing a "Kiss the Cook" apron at barbecues, capricious lawn jockeys and white-washed gravel, the lawn best captures the American suburb and all of its quasi-pastoral pretensions. That omnipresent green swatch of turf-in-bondage that so clumsily mimics nature is the unifying element in an environment that is neither city nor country, neither natural nor technological.

Like the countless poor misunderstood teens who fill the 'burbs with angst, the lawn itself is fraught with uncertainties, tension and a crisis of identity. The American lawn is generally considered an expression of liberty and leisure; yet the almost unspoken codes involved with home ownership dictate that all must conform to a strict set of rules. Allowing your lawn to go unchecked violates a rigid social contract.

The fifth and final in "The American Century" series, The American Lawn: Surfaces of Everyday Life is on now at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The aim of this show is to examine the incredible impact the lawn has had on American life and culture. North America has more acreage (32 million) of lawn under cultivation than any other crop, including wheat and corn, and the amount spent annually on seed and care products exceeds $25 billion. Suburban wisdom has it: the more lawn you have, the better off you are. In an environment where high walls are frowned upon, the lawn acts as a link between the resident and the neighbourhood and as a decontamination unit from the urban masses.

One of the challenges of an exhibition like this one is to make sure that the subject matter is at once fun and culturally relevant. By taking commonplace components and exhibiting them in a manner reminiscent of display vitrines found at natural history museums, the show's designers have been quite effective. The architectural firm Diller and Scofidio of New York have been slick, tech-savvy and whimsical.

The exhibition is comprised of a series of rooms that concentrate on different aspects of the lawn. In one such room, there is a display of lawn mowers that were once considered quite advanced. Mounted on rotating daises and spotlighted to resemble an auto show, they are accompanied by a monitor showing vintage commercials and a hilarious educational film on what to do if your child refuses to cut the lawn.

On display in an adjacent room are stereoscopic photographs by Robert Sansone showing the lines of demarcation between one owner's property and the next. Often delineated by subtleties such as grass height and breed, this gallery displays the ridiculous lengths to which people will go over centimetres of land. Accompanying the images are documents from court cases involving suburban border disputes.

In the next room is a vast assortment of inverted cleated sport shoes, ranging from the vicious metal blades of the baseball shoe to the weird bubble-wrap soles of astro-turf footwear.

Exposing the unnatural origins of the engineered lawn, there is a gallery displaying swatches of both natural and artificial turf accompanied by their particular patents.

The American Lawn includes a peppering of excellent photographs by the likes of Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand, and there is a room with a constant screening of film excerpts by David Lynch, Atom Egoyan and John Carpenter.

The show makes it very clear that America has an obsession with turf. Is this obsession healthy or unhealthy? The fact that "over-commitment" to gardening is now a recognized medical disorder is perhaps an indication.

The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, to November 8