In and Out: Chakaia Booker–untiring at the DeCordova

Chakaia Booker 5-21-10

Another must see: Chakaia Booker’s big black sculptures made from rubber tires, at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA.

Outdoor sculptures include a huge “picture frame” made of tire scraps assembled on some sort of armature– through which you can see a corner of the museum . Also, inverted tee-pee-like structure, composed of V-shaped scraps, on a scaffolding.

"No More Milk and Cookies"

Indoors: complex forms, freestanding and on the walls–which embody shapes, textures, and visually complex abstract scenes “referencing African textiles and body decoration to evoke issues of black culture, identity, gender, and environmentalism,” as the DeCordova Web site explains.

The sculptures also bring up important questions about relationships of man-made waste materials, landscape, and culture.

Some of the sculptures look like whimsical worms or insects; despite the overall “heavy” message of the show, these are simply fun….and so highly textural that you want to touch them. (I have to admit…my friend E and I each copped a feel—tho appearing soft, most of the rubber pieces are hard–before discovering a demonstration area near the exhibit where you can actually play with tire materials).

As the Decordova points out on its Web site:

Formally, Booker’s work is engaged in dialogue with the history of Western sculpture, from the ancient and classical tradition of the human figure through the Modernist non-objective sculpture of the twentieth century.

What sets her work apart, and significantly expands upon the history of sculpture, is her ability–with rubber tires–to create surfaces on objects that resemble skins, feathers, scales, spikes, armor, or attire.

These surfaces, in concert with their underlying forms, serve as metaphors for a potent range of emotions and psychological states.

Booker’s sculptures can seem alluring, threatening, encompassing, vulnerable, majestic, humorous, ominous, or tender.

I wanted to jump into “It’s So Hard to Be Green”…instead, asked E to take my photo in front of it.

: AMH and Hard to be Green

In and Out refers simultaneously to the indoor/outdoor placement of the sculptures, the complex dialogues among surface/structure and mass/volume/void in each work, and also to the sexually suggestive images in some of Booker’s work.
I confess that I didn’t catch the sexual suggestions…but maybe that’s the wanting to jump into it, part.

I was repelled (and fascinated) by a huge bug-like sculpture, but did find the patterns beautiful and mesmorizing.

Throughout the indoor exhibit, I marvelled at Booker’s creativity–and, while, at first, felt a bit put off by all of the black, was impressed with how effective it was in highlighting spatial relationships, recognizable objects, African fabric and body art patterns, and abstract form.

[Added 5-25-10: and thinking more about it–perhaps the all-black sculptures makes a further, important point about power and variation of and within black cultures, nations, communities and individuals. Brava! AMH]

The show will be up through August 29, 2010.

—-Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA .

Malanga “Souls” Photo Exhibit Opens at Menard

Last night, the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA, opened a truly impressive exhibition of Gerard Malanga’s photographs– black and white portraits of some of the most illustrious artists and literary figures of the last 40 years or so– Keith Richards, Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Roman Polanski, John Ashberry, and Larry Rivers–along with pictures of a few “unknowns.”

Andy Warhol

Knowing that Malanga, born in 1943, worked for seven years as Andy Warhol’s chief assistant and collaborator; that along with Warhol and John Wilcock he co-founded Interview Magazine; and that his photos have been commissioned by Elle, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair, one might expect these portraits to be glitzy, glam celebrity.

But Malanga is also a writer who has published 17 books of poetry.
And in this show, called “Souls,” in every photo, it is the poetic spirit–of both photographer and subject– that shines through.

Larry Rivers

The program notes declare that “Malanga’s proximity to the epicenter of a cultural and artistic revolution gained him unprecedent access” to his wide array of subjects.

And, clearly, his visual sense and technical skills are stellar.

But to me, what stands out is the mutuality in these photos– each snapped at a moment of seeming profound interpersonal understanding, of relationship, of trust between photographer and subject.

Most remarkable is how the intimacy of these moments—some from more than 30 years ago– is shared with/deeply experienced by the viewer.

At the Pierre Menard Gallery, 10 Arrow St. Cambridge, MA through April 11, 2010

—Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish HarrisCom Blog and Ithaca Diaries Blog.

Concord Art's "Unique Print" show makes good impression

Much enjoyed the Concord Art Association’s New England Impressions III,” the Unique Print, March 21-May3, 2009.”

Peik Larson, Red Tree

The show, presented on two floors in the CAA’s lovely colonial home at 37 Lexington Road in Concord Center, is a colorful collection of monotypes, monoprints and experimental prints composed of fabrics, hand quilting, stamping, sandpaper, and pastel, on wood, metal, ink and paper, and combinations of the above. In the words of curator Dorothy Thompson, the show is one in a series celebrating New England artists and printers “trying something new, breaking the rules.”

All of the works–with photos of each work and a video of the opening reception available at www.concordart.com, were stunning. My favorites included:

Inner Courtyard

Roz Karal Ablo’s Interior Courtyard--a dramatic collage and pastel work in vibrant blues, mauves, with a little red and green thrown in. It seemed to embody the splitting of space into time, a la Duchamp, a rushing, perhaps, through what might be a structural, village courtyard composed of buildings, streets and sky– or, perhaps, an inner personal one.

Randy Garber, Cognitive Dissonance

Randy Garber’s elegant Cognitive Dissonance, composed composed of hard and soft grand spit bite etching, wood cut transfer, monoprint on piano player scrolls.

Pastel colors, different on each side of the scrolls, are printed with abstract shapes, hands, gears, heads and other forms. The scrolls, though still, seem to undulate, mesmorizing the viewer as s/he comes to realize that words, presented in reverse order, actually make some sense. Appear may love where ing tell no there’s.

Michael Mazur, Rocks and Water

Debra Olin, Gliki's Flight

Jeanne Williamson, Orange Construction

Jan Arabas, Bird Flu.

Heads and Tales Review

Hatry photo, Menard Gallery Heads and Tales

If Heide Hatry’s provocative photographic show—Heads and Tales–at the Peirre Menard Gallery, (10 Arrow St. in Cambridge) is meant to shock: it does. In fact, for a few moments, it made me fear for the mental health of the artist, who has (beautifully–even lovingly) photographed her sculptures portraying female victims of violent death.

Hatry, who grew up in Germany and moved to New York City in 2003, sculpted life-sized female mannequins from clay and covered them with untreated pigskin (a cold wet sample of which is available in the gallery with the notice: “please touch”). She added raw meat for the lips and fresh pig eyes—and in some cases, flies, safety pins, and other props—creating, according to the gallery writeup, “the illusion of life where there is none”.

Hatry then photographed the mannequins—some enlarged to 20”x 30”, others more life-size, at 12” x 18”.

Viewed from afar, the photographs appear lifelike, but close up, you realize the subjects are constructs—adding physical and intellectual layers to the artist’s statements on the horrifying situations faced by many women—and on photography’s role in bringing the inanimate to life.

Hatry’s “views” are further emphasized by accompanying tales about the “women’s” lives (and deaths) as imagined by 27 writers—some of them well known feminists.

The show is well-conceived and displayed, which makes its subject matter all the more disturbing.

The exhibit, which opened Feb 13, 2009, will run through March 15. It corresponds with the release of Hatry’s book, Heads and Tales, and with readings, book signings and the premiere of a play.

AMH

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.