Alice Lang, Little Ghost. Courtesy of the artist.
Together Forever, a group show
of four female artists on view at Broadway Gallery this past September,
should be lauded for its unique approach to representations of identity
and the relationship between the self and the other, as well as for its
compelling presentation of four diverse and distinctive female voices
that in concert harmonized in exciting ways. Curated by Christine
Kennedy, the exhibition featured the works of Alice Lang, Gertrud
Alfredsson, Leah Beabout, and Marjorie van Cura.
One of the most intriguing approaches to the curatorial themes of the
show was the soft-sculpture installation by Australian artist, Alice
Lang. Employing sewn materials that include nude-colored vinyl, nylon,
ribbon, satin, and wadding, Lang’s anthropomorphic objects allude to
both a fetish object and to flesh itself. Functioning as fine-art-craft
hybrids, her grotesque forms exist in states of dynamic tension by
evoking contradictory responses: they are structured, yet amorphous;
repulsive, yet alluring, familiar—yet surreal. As such, they suggest
something of a cross between Maurice Sendak’s playful, yet spooky
illustrations for his children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are and Matthew Barney’s highly sophisticated, yet equally as bizarre Cremaster Series.
For Together Forever,
Lang created an engaging installation composed of a series of stuffed
skin-toned phallic and tumor-shaped forms suspended from the ceiling. A
photographic image of the same sculpture being interacted with by a
bare-chested man was simultaneously presented. This kind of approach to
installation suggests new modes of interactivity between the living
subject and the inanimate form of sculpture. Explaining these new forms
as “wearable pieces that integrate and interact with the subject,” Lang
describes them as “parasitic,” a severe, but perhaps honest perspective
on the relationships we form with others.
Like Lang, Marjorie Van Cura’s charming and skillfully-executed
multi-media abstract works on panel explore the notion of
“relationships with the other” through the formal concerns of
organization, pattern, and biomorphic design. Working in unusual media
such as galkyd and oil, or carbon and oil, she mounts these
delicately-rendered rice paper-paintings on panel. These exquisite
images bring to mind organic forms such as the skeleton, the fossil,
and the shell, objects that function as remnants of once-living forms.
Her entrancing Untitled 0208,
for instance, an Op-Art graphic composition depicting a gray
vertebrae-like pattern bordered by undulating white lines atop a field
of shimmering silvers and periwinkles, carefully straddles the boundary
between abstraction and representation. Alluding to both the mimetic
mode of the image in the age of digital reproduction as well as the
most archaic of biomorphic forms, Van Cura’s repeating patterns and
color relationships produce optical effects that as she describes,
“create a visually intense, visceral experience,”
Taking a completely different, yet
equally as compelling approach to the notion of identity and
relationships are the subtlety naïve, yet highly sophisticated works on
paper by Swedish artist, Gertrude Alfredsson. Working in pastels, her
mystical figurative drawings explore the notion of the inner conflict
between a person and her own self. In one image we are presented with
two figures, symbolically joined at the head, while in another we see
an unknown hand pushing down on someone’s head from above; we assume
it’s the subject’s own hand pushing down on herself. Such works evoke
the sense of frustration we often feel when confronted with our own
worst enemy: ourselves. Like Alfredsson, Leah Beabout presents a
collection of works on paper. Her distinctive drawing installation of
quasi-diary and journal illustrations was composed of a chaotic
arrangement of drawings tacked to the wall. The piece continued
Alfredsson’s dialogue about one’s relationship with one’s own life, and
the thinking and remembering process itself. Here Beabout, a
self-trained artist and rapper/singer, courageously tells us her story;
from struggling on the streets to the epic loss of her own child. Each
story is told from her own unique perspective of a young woman to her
incarcerated lover. The delicacy, urgency and scale of each narrative
reflect the destination of each note.
Together, these works, though divergent
in style, media, and theme, nonetheless offer forth a distinctly female
voice, one that attests to the multiplicity of perspectives – from
pathos to celebration; from the divine to the grotesque; from the human
to the technological; and from chaos to order – in dealing with the
self and her relationship with the other.
