UNSETTLING: Butkiewiez’s Little Girl Blue. |
Every generation is a Me Generation, it’s just that some are less bashful — or more boastful — about the opportunity. As for artists, how can creativity not be even more personal? And when there’s a receptiveness, as there is today, for an artist to resist being herded along with one trend or movement and still be taken seriously, why not stray into singular expertise, into personal vision?In Hera Gallery’s “30 Under 30” (through August 19), originality is the sole tacit rule. Thirty works by 20 regional artists have been selected by Jo-Ann Conklin, who curates Brown University’s List Art Gallery, and if these artists are typical of their set, freshly examining and exploring possibilities is a respected career move these days.
A back door approach to the real has always been the surreal, or at least the dreamlike. Your mind suffers mild whiplash when you approach Daniel Langston’s lifelike young girl from behind and step around her: the blond hair that cascades to mid-back over her hospital gown is equally long in front. The facelessness and the bare feet reinforce her vulnerability. The piece is titled Anonymous, and with it Langston makes Duane Hanson, with his literal epoxy-resin sculptures, look like an illustrator.
A similar cognitive dissonance between real and unreal is accomplished in two staged black-and-white photographs by Amy Lovera. Frankly, I’ve Been Afraid that Nothing Will Happen has her dangling, eyes closed, just inches above a stubbly field (again bare feet for our tactile empathy), long braids floating upward, one trailing a kite tail, against a faintly lightning-laced sky. As meticulously composed is I Will Feel More Settled Now, in which she soars more actively, fluttering arms mere blurs, a twig held in her mouth for a nest, toes attenuated like witchy fingers.
Also starting with innocence, Joshua Butkiewiez finds both the identity anomie of Langston and the dream consciousness of Lovera in Little Girl Blue. A hollow-eyed doll of a child is suspended over a mirror shard; arrayed at her feet are heads expressing various modes of alarm, one of repose, and two small animal skulls with flesh-tearing incisors.
With the above artists, private meanings open outward through universal associations. But interior significances can also overlap with our understandings when they are whimsical. Ria Brodell’s Birdmen has several branches sticking out of a wall. They are populated by several finch-size birds with the thick black hair, sideburns, and eyebrows of oily tango instructors; their chirps probably have comical accents. An accompanying drawing, Flock of Birdmen #3, exquisitely composed, attests to an obsession we might enjoy replacing our own.
Beginning with the external rather than the interior, artists can help us see the ordinary, notice the overlooked. Millee Tibbs has three large Cibachrome prints here, each a portrait of houses under street lights, trash or discarded items at the curbs awaiting pick-up, the arrangements looking like stiff bourgeoise gentlemen posed with their status-enhancing possessions.
