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Friday,
March 28, 2003 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific Visual
Arts By Sheila
Farr
Microsoft collection curator Michael Klein has assembled a delectable show for the Center on Contemporary Art, a smart, well-balanced look at the Northwest scene that includes hot younger artists as well as a sprinkling of old favorites. It's a happy show, full of promise and skill and little amazements. Klein chose subtle abstractions and audacious figurative work, an equal measure of two- and three-dimensional pieces. The elegant installation and the excellence of the artworks form a strong argument for the latest art of the region. "Crossroads" easily inserts CoCA back on the list of our most important contemporary art venues. There are lots of great individual pieces in the show, but, as any good curator will do, Klein draws parallels between them to give the show meaning. He places a stark, strange Roy McMakin chest of drawers in front of a black and white Lauri Chambers geometric abstraction. From one side of the room, you can enjoy the converging of the two artists' imagery. From the other, you get jolted by the contrast between the blocky profile of the furniture design and the wild action of Gaylen Hansen's big painting "Red Dog."
Sculpture is a standout in "Crossroads." I'm a longtime fan of what Scott Fife can accomplish with cardboard as a medium. He's got two dynamite pieces in this show: a head of Teddy Roosevelt and an upside-down head of labor leader Eugene Debs. Debs' features are molded in layers of gray, then etched and pierced and pieced together. It plays beautifully against another sculpted head by Claudia Fitch, a pink polka-dot polyester resin piece called "Ancestor." Both Fife and Fitch let their sculpture pedestals have speaking parts in the final work. Then there's the lanky outcropping of Cris Bruch's "Politics of Time," an eccentric sculpture built of hundreds of graphite-rubbed wooden circles, looped together like a three-dimensional doodle. Its form dances nicely with the shimmery, undulant eggplant-colored mass of Hans Nelsen's untitled wall sculpture just behind it. Nelsen, a fine craftsman, can make wood ripple like bare skin. Other favorites include works by Claire Cowie and Matthew Landkammer, both of whom manipulate dissolved color and minimal form in their paintings. Landkammer's scant color fields on maple wood are transparent to the point of disappearing, yet cast a strong aura of color on the wall behind them. Cowie paints loose figurative watercolors and also models addictive little ceramic sculptures that seem to melt like cake decorations in the sun. Photographer Spike Mafford adds mystery to some recent shots of a decaying Greek temple to Apollo. He writes a secret message in transparent Braille across the plexiglass covering the image. If anybody out there can read it, let me know what it says. So, why does a show like "Crossroads" matter? Because our institutions devote so little space or energy to what's happening right now on the local scene. SAM gave up its popular Northwest annual years ago and Bellevue Art Museum, which picked up the tradition, has, under its new director and curator, decided to drop it this year. SAM's "Documents Northwest" series, which spotlights work by local artists, tends to ghettoize them rather than broadcast their importance to the world. Besides, it's a stretch to consider the current Anthony Hernandez show by a Northwest artist: Hernandez is based in L.A. and Idaho. The upcoming Charles LeDray show was organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia — hardly a local endeavor. LeDray lives in New York, but was born in Seattle. The Museum of Northwest Art, which is devoted to art of the region, leans to nostalgia in its exhibitions. So does Tacoma Art Museum. At times it feels like our institutions have come down with a terminal case of Tobey and Gravesitis. A lot more has happened here in the past half century! It's great to see CoCA taking up the slack. Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company |
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