Art Review: 'Figures' a bold contemporary show
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Picture a levitating room-sized mock-up of the Taj Mahal made of bright pink Saran Wrap, a translucent house glowing with an inner light and harboring a field of golden wheat, and a circular strand of 500 inch-high sandalwood buildings reminiscent of those on a Monopoly board. Then ask yourself what they have in common.
Barbara Weissberger's "#760" is among works by 14 artists included in "Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures" at the McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown State University, Ohio.
Click photo for larger image.
That's the dominant theme of "Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures" at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University in Ohio.
This visually and intellectually gifted exhibition was co-curated by Vicky A. Clark, who teaches, writes and curates from a Pittsburgh base, and Sandhini Poddar, a native of India now with the CUE Art Foundation, a New York nonprofit that provides support to emerging artists and aspiring art professionals.
While the notion of universality gained a bad reputation at the height of post-modernism, when it was deemed a linguistic tool for enforcing colonial viewpoints, these curators acknowledge that similarities may be found among even the most disparate cultures.
"I have come to distrust the idea of universals, but I do believe in commonalities; the difference, more than just semantics, allows individuality within the reality of being human," Clark says in a stimulating catalog essay, cleverly presented as a conversation between the curators.
The 14 artists exhibited are all women, not out of design, but because their work prompts the dialogue the curators wanted to initiate. Half were born in the United States, while the others hail from places as widespread as Tokyo, Nairobi and Beirut. Perhaps most telling is that nearly two-thirds of them now reside within the boundaries of New York's accelerated art market culture.
The most obvious link among the works referenced above -- by Rina Banerjee, Adrienne Heinrich and Zarina, respectively -- is an architectural form. After that, considerations become more complicated.
Banerjee -- who spent the first seven years of her life in Calcutta, then moved to Queens with her family and now lives in Brooklyn -- delves into national and global stereotypes of India in "Take Me, Take Me, Take Me to the Palace of Love" by re-presenting the Taj, a legendary symbol of romantic devotion and aesthetic purity, in gaudy, ephemeral mass-market material.
Akron native Heinrich, who lives in Murrysville, incorporates the staff of life into her "House of Souls" to speak of the balance, or perhaps conflict, between the outer media-saturated world and internal quietude and strength.
Zarina's scented "Tasbih (Prayer Beads)" references a Muslim rosary cord while calling to mind the rosaries and incense of Catholicism. A New Yorker since 1975, she also exhibits "Directions to My House," located in the small Indian town she grew up in, which includes local landmarks such as a "bougainvillea-covered fence." It's "only 7,438 miles away," she meaningfully concludes.
From these nutshell descriptions, one may begin to see that there is a more significant, if intangible, thread that runs through the show's artworks: the artists' personal observations on 21st-century life and on their environments, and the resultant attempts to represent, control, take back and/or transcend a condition of that world via visual objects of their making.
A still from Wangechi Mutu's DVD projection "Cutting."
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Also exhibited is Cheryl Yun's "Abstract One-Piece" from "The Cheryl Yun Collection Lingerie/Swimsuit Series," below, which is made of Gampi Japanese tissue embedded with shrapnel.
Click photo for larger image.
The rich and evocative mix ranges from subtle -- as in Kathy Prendergast's poignant "The End and The Beginning I," a white cotton baby bonnet sprouting gray hair -- to blatant, as is Wangechi Mutu's provocative installation of suspended upside-down wine bottles that slowly stain the floor with their red residue, Untitled here, but originally titled "Hangin' in Texas" when installed in San Antonio last year.
Formally exquisite works such as Heesung Yang's ritualistically scored Untitled canvases and Zarina's elegant woodcut series, "Home Is a Foreign Place," complement conceptual socio-political works like Barbara Weissberger's witty gouache and ink riffs on consumer/media culture, including "The Story of Appetite," and Cheryl Yun's barbed paper and photo fashions, such as "Tac Suicide Vest with Matching Thong I" from "The Cheryl Yun Collection Lingerie/Swimsuit Series."
The exhibition, which is being circulated under the umbrella of Pamela Auchincloss/Arts Management, New York, will conclude at the University of Richmond Museums, where it will be a cornerstone of the communitywide Tucker-Boatwright Festival of the Arts. The handsome catalog was designed by Pittsburgher Brett Yasko and printed locally by Kreider Printing.
We are indebted to the staff of the McDonough -- director Leslie Brothers, assistant director Angels DeLucia and exhibition design and production manager Robyn Maas -- for bringing this exceptional gathering of expression and idea to our viewing area.
Visitors may wish to allot time to see exhibitions, most notably "Kiki Smith: Works on Paper," at The Butler Institute of American Art, located across the street from the McDonough and open the same hours.
"Figures" continues through Nov. 3 on the Youngstown State University campus. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and until 8 p.m. Wednesdays. Admission is free; call 1-330-941-1400 or visit mcdonoughmuseum.ysu.edu.
First Published October 25, 2006 12:00 am
