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What is to be said of an art show that features a diverse assemblage of objects that include a one-legged demigod, a squirming pile of hairless pink critters, a translucent egg carton, a non-utilitarian broom, a bug-eyed astronaut helmet in silver and gold, and the work of a minimalist who attempts to treat science and mysticism as parallel routes to enlightenment?
The answer? It’s resplendent in diversity.
“Synergies: Hybrid Art” at the New Bedford Art Museum was juried by the Brooklyn-based artist team of Amy Lemaire and Nicolas Touron. In their juror’s statement, they noted the attraction to practices that move beyond fixed categories and working between disciplines.
It is a heartfelt attempt to reflect a contemplative and contemporary moment on the cusp of “accelerated technological change, ecological awareness, and the constant recombination of information, histories and forms.” Art is no longer regulated to strident disciplines or a hierarchy of isms. It’s a rave new world.
Lemaire and Touron (who are exhibiting in “Vanishing Ecologies: Speculative Futures,” a concurrent exhibition at the Art Museum through Oct. 11) have selected work by 20 artists for “Synergies: Hybrid Art.”
Brian Boldon’s “Unexpected Bloom 1” might remind some viewers of Tinkertoys, a wooden construction set designed for children in 1914 (and still being produced) that included slotted dowels, spools, wheels and the like. Tinkertoys were famed enough to be featured in Pixar’s first three “Toy Story” films.
But Boldon’s three-dimensional work of painted porcelain, carbon fiber, stainless steel and TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) is far more sophisticated and graceful. With thin sleek black rods inserted through spheres and cones of burgundy, pink, maroon, pale green, pink and lavender, and traveling in every direction, it is both simple and elegant.
Caterina Urrata Weintraub’s “Pillow Fight” might be a pink pile of piglets atop a perfect pillow, but sheer quantity and the length of their tails suggest something more likely in the rodent family, perhaps mice, maybe rats. In her artist statement, she notes that she uses glass to create playful objects and curious scenes. Her hope is to conjure a sense of sentiment and wonder and sometimes a sense of discomfort. In a waterfront city that is often beset by frequent rat infestations, it is more likely to be a sense of disgust or dread that some viewers might experience. And there are those that might find them absolutely adorable.
Sticking with pink for a bit, there is Grace Sachi Troxell’s “Self-Portrait as Kabocha,” which is simultaneously familiar and disorienting. She notes that one-third of vegetables are discarded before they arrive in supermarkets because they are ugly or misshapen. In her piece, she has utilized clay casts of kabocha (a hardy Japanese squash), other varieties of squash, beets, fennel, carrots, and female breasts to “insist on the presence of food and people, objects that should nourish but do not.” Like Urrata’s pink work, Troxell’s is both lovely and somewhat discomforting.
Eva Tellier’’s “Coma” (which received the Juror’s First Place Award) is in her words, “inspired by anatomies of hard- and soft-bodied species and the queer polymorphism of nature.” Suspended from above, the sculpture is constructed with ceramic components, rubber, silicone and human hair.
Noting that the use of decorative elements and feminine associations to invoke the monstrously female, as serpentine, dark and slithery, “Coma” is as horrifying as the xenomorphs of the “Alien” movie franchise. Tellier’s take on body horror is a celebration of otherness in general and of the possibilities of a self-defined queer identity.
Corran Shrimpton’s “Buffering” is an ornate silver glazed and painted ceramic stoneware statue of two plump women, back to back, shoulders touching, breasts and bellies exposed or perhaps, of one woman symbolically with her back to a mirror, if there were such a thing as a three-dimensional mirror.
By tapping distinctly Victorian decor, the artist makes pointed commentary about historically beauty-obsessed culture and the continuance of it in the current times. In an artist statement, Shrimpton sadly and rightly notes that ”the restriction and contortion of (female) bodies needed to achieve impossible beauty standards” prompts women to reconsider the expectations of femininity, their origins and their effects.
Sarah Swift’s “Maho Bay” is a wall-mounted, large-billed green and yellow bird, likely from a tropical spot, made from recycled fruit bags, hand-dyed fibers, silk and wool. In other work not in the exhibition, Swift has utilized plastic bags, drinking straws, metal can tabs, discarded clothing and bed sheets. While her bird is charming and pretty enough, it is likely that is not really the point. She notes that she hopes that she can inspire others to be more resourceful with ordinary materials and to challenge the priorities of a consumer driven society. If she can pull that off, that’d be an art as well.
Aspen Golann describes herself as a “marginalized woodworker trained in 17th-19th century techniques” who replicates household objects including utensils, brushes and brooms that were once used to glorify power in early America. She questions if their beauty can be divorced from the power structure of the time (power structures that, of course, still exist) including racism, classicism, and misogyny.
Her “Circle Broom,” constructed with fumed oak, broomcorn and linen, is absolutely unusable, rejecting utilitarianism in favor of powerful commentary. It becomes a totem of significance, infused with the rejection that it is women that should be doing the domestic chores. Brooms are clearly associated with witches (evil women!) and that is reason enough to sweep that mindset into the dustbin of history.
Other works of particular note include James Labold’s subtly majestic “Herculean Glitch,” Linda Behar’s playful digital presentation “The Woman and the Vase,” Tsehai Johnson’s quiet and contemplative wall of ceramic forms called “Accumulations” and Chad Bridgewater’s mysterious orb “SDX-O1C.”
And then there was “Hawaiian Commentaries: A bald-headed man,” a small low-key quilt by Patricia Autenrieth. It is a horizontally-oriented rectangle of stitched white fabric, edged with a thin line of black. On the left-hand side, there is a strange black shape, somewhat reminiscent of a Rorschach Test inkblot. On the right, there are eight bits of stacked text, some full sentences and some but a single word. The penmanship of each line differed.
It was a Rorschach Test!
The answers included:
“A bald headed man in the lotus position meditating — focused.”
“Body of human female about to give birth.”
“Vagina.”
“Profile of back-to-back seats at a bus station.”
“Sink stopper.”
“Throne.”
I dreamt about that quilt and woke up in the night with an epiphany of sorts. I got out of bed to jot down some notes. The blot had become symbolic of something bigger in my mind, and I realized it was art itself. Despite what artists make, what curators select, what gallerists hang and yes, what critics pontificate, it is each and every viewer that defines what art is.
Sometimes you just see what you want. See for yourself.
“Synergies: Hybrid Art” is on display at the New Bedford Art Museum, 608 Pleasant St., until Aug. 30.
Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
“Coma” is just the mirror image of the human colon, reversed left for right.
An individual’s mind can interpret as they wish.