Rocco’s Pub and Pizza in Goodview, Minnesota, is missing its painting, “Coming In” (1972), by the late Ron Hunt. The painting — an idyllic landscape of ducks and a marshy river bed — has hung in the restaurant since Hunt gifted it to Tom Barth, founder of Rocco’s. For the time being, the painting hangs at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, along with two tables and three booth seats from the restaurant.

The restaurant, one of two locations in the adjacent cities of Winona and Goodview, serves up fresh-made pizzas with thin crust and a lot of love, and its decor offers a throwback to another era. When my boyfriend and I visited in September, we were delighted by the glowing Old Style lanterns hanging above our blue-gray booth. At 4 p.m., soon after the business opened, we were the only customers in the place, and a  teen waiter politely took our order.

Across the room, near the jukebox, a very large rectangle of discolored white paint, marking the spot on the wall previously covered by a painting, looked conspicuous. In the center of the rectangle hung an official-looking sign bearing the logos of both Rocco’s and the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, stating that the work was out on loan.

The sign carried a certain institutional weight, and its discolored paint made it look a bit like an archaeological site. The theatrics of Rocco’s loan to the museum punctuated the conceit dreamed up by artist Andy DuCett — to codify his communal investigation into Winona and its surrounding area’s past, present and future.

DuCett playfully teases institutional language and practices as he celebrates his hometown. Through maps and diagrams, vehicles, found objects, zines, sculpture and installation — many of which are brought to the museum in collaboration with other artists — DuCett, now based in Minneapolis, weaves together fictional and real organizations and places in “Home(town),” inviting the audience into a collective narrative experience.

More Artscape: Orchestra Hall’s iconic cubes get a video projection makeover

DuCett was playing with ideas of fictional agencies even before the exhibition opened. An earlier piece — part of the MMAM’s “Fluid: What Is Marine Art, and What Can It Be?” exhibit since 2024 — references a fantastical museum, “The South London Museum of Maritime Kinetics,” as part of its credit line. The work, “On Loan” (2019), creates an illusion of standing in a rocking ship at sea, where an old-fashioned landscape painting — complete with gilded frame — rocks back and forth through its kinetic mechanism. The work makes for a teasing addition to that exhibition, which asks questions about the purpose of a marine art museum, the challenging history of the medium of marine art and possible routes forward.

With “Home(town),” DuCett uses his practice to ask who gets to shape a community’s history — and what happens when those stories enter a museum. The work fits well at the MMAM, which has been rethinking what art about water can encompass, beyond the traditional focus on boats and maritime imagery. There are some references to water in the exhibition, but its focus remains more directly related to Winona itself, bringing the city’s restaurants, objects and local lore into the galleries, and blurring lines between memory, civic history and dreaming.

One of the first things you encounter as you enter “Home(town)” is a Zamboni. If you’re not familiar, it’s the vehicle you see in the winter that smooths out ice skating rinks. It’s a real Zamboni in the gallery, not merely a replica. It appears to be polishing — or spitting out, perhaps — a map created by Mike Schley that imagines the machine’s route from Winona to the Mississippi’s source at Lake Itasca, with the various place names and bodies of water penned in by hand. 

On the side of the Zamboni, artist Mark Dion has created a diagram naming the machine’s various parts and bits as transformative political actions. Pointing to a tire, the diagram reads, “Overturn Citizens United.” Other parts of the diagram instruct the viewer to “Abolish Electoral College,” “Codify Women’s Right to Choose,” and “Term Limits for SCOTUS.” Taken together, Schley’s map and Dion’s diagram create a humorous instruction manual for envisioning a future for not only Winona but the United States as well.

Adjacent to the Zamboni and map is a structure approximating the historic buildings found in Winona. Boasting a “For Rent” sign, the window also holds a sign for the made-up Bureau of Institute. The nonsensically named agency recalls Vaclav Havel’s poking fun at needless administration in the play “The Memorandum,” but it also holds the possibilities of what could be accomplished by future organizations and entities in Winona. (I’m told the building will have new businesses move in throughout the run).

From there, the exhibit travels to a real place, or at least a placeholder of a real place. The Rocco’s Pizza corner of the exhibition is perhaps the coziest of all the sections. Complete with a neon Miller Lite sign, the booth tables are each topped with specially made menus, creating a feeling that you could easily sit down and order a pie. Above the booths sits Hunt’s epic landscape of the Mississippi River, and the birds that fly above its watery beauty.

More Artscape: The Format couldn’t look away when ICE came to Minnesota

During our recent visit to the Winona area, we stopped at a place just like the scene Hunt captures in his painting — the nearby Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge on the Wisconsin side of the river. Lush and serene, the park was filled with herons, pelicans and other birds making their way south for the winter.

Visiting the river gave me a greater sense of the region’s physical makeup, as did stopping at a number of businesses in the area like the Winona Athletic Club, which figures into an upcoming participatory bingo game DuCett is organizing.

We also tasted Penguin Zesto’s unusually colored “rockets,” a dipped ice cream treat on a stick. Carolyn Swiszcz, another collaborator on the exhibition, has made a beautiful send-up to the multi-generational ice cream shop based in Winona. For the show, Swiszcz has made a zine explaining her love of Penguin Zesto, a bit of its history, and its former giant ice cream sculpture that stood at the East location for many years. Besides the zines, which are available to peruse, Swiszcz and DuCett have also built a mural depicting the beloved business.

A frantic energy runs through DuCett’s “Home(town).” It’s nostalgia laced with irony, worked over with satire, and used to question our relationship to time and place. What comes through, unmistakably, is love for Winona — a mad kind of love, carrying a whimsical mythogeography into the future.

At 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 3, DuCett will participate in a “Meet the Artist” event at the museum, part of the larger “Fall Look Weekend” happening Oct. 2-4. Find out more about the show and events here. 

The post Artscape on the road: Visiting artist Andy DuCett’s homage to Winona appeared first on MinnPost.

This post was shared from MinnPost.