Jamie Gray Williams: GESUNDHEIT at Interloc, Thomaston, ME
July 29, 2023 - September 18, 2023
In early July, Jamie and I are standing in the Brancusi room. The hall is cool, a concrete floor with cathedral ceilings gaping above us that make me oscillate between feeling like I am in a womb or a tomb. The museum is a graveyard, a place that we come to honor the ones before us, reviving them momentarily as we stand in front of objects and images and consider their existence. Perhaps they also spark new ideas, birthed by the viewer post exit.
A plaque on one of his works excerpts a letter from his lover Margit Pogany. It reads, “Read it if you get a spell of weariness or dejection, and it will give you new strength. It will show you that a glorious death is far less noble than a struggle.” His portrait of her is in this room, carved out of marble in 1912. It is almost owl-like in form, her arms folding in on her own body, the large bug eyes gazing in a subtle downward look and propped up on a small square plinth.
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In Gesundheit, Williams creates ghastly narratives of abstracted human forms, stretching and contorting themselves across the canvas. Large colorful gestures show these forms mid action; squatting while looking over their shoulder, hovering over a body in a coffin, a dog whipping itself around. They confront us with an emotional cycle of darkness lightening to laughter. The superstition says that a sneeze causes your soul to leave the body. We say bless you or gesundheit, which translates directly to health, to counteract the illness or devil residing within. And what is our body without our soul, or soul without body?
Death and the Drawer shows us a skeletal face staring at its mask, both separating and staring at one another in grotesque realization of the other's existence. Or perhaps the drawer depicted has created an image too real to acknowledge without horror. In Passage, ghoulish figures hover over a body in an open coffin. Just as we gaze at art at the museum, these viewers ruminate on what is before them. They cannot ignore it, a realization of what will come of them eventually as well. Alone in its own room, the large vertical work The Visit has taken it one step further. We stare at it straight on, the body becoming an object, about to be buried or preserved, manipulated by the onlooker. A close up of the subject’s face in Still, Too mirrors back on the opposite wall.
We start to wonder what has brought about the fates of these specters, however it is not all macabre. The subjects are not figures in a traditional sense; they are spirits or phantoms that are up to playful antics while towing the line of existence. In Fart Maniac, a caper is at play, marking territory through flatulence. They are expelling similarly to a sneeze, but this time without the courtesy of receiving a blessing from you for their gesture.
Zeuxis, a Greek painter in 5th Century BCE, was apparently said to have met his fate after laughing too hard at a painting he made depicting Aphrodite in which the aged woman who commissioned the work also wanted to be the model. This puts a new meaning towards Last Laugh, wherein laughing to death may have been this figure’s fate. It is common slang now when something is hilarious to respond with “I’m dead”. I wonder if this is because at that quick moment of pure joy we come to peaceful terms with our mortality.
Williams’ paintings push past memento mori into the realm of the absurd, reminding us of the laughable, beautiful chaos of life and death. She depicts an otherworldly realm, one of spirits laughing and gassy ghosts. Through this we are also shown a level of reality that we do not often acknowledge, one of being trapped in and at some point leaving a body.
Elana Adler: TO THROUGH at Buoy, Kittery ME
June 10, 2023 - August 12, 2023
Elana Adler’s exhibition, To Through, brings together works that function through materiality in an interstitial space where we are confronted with what is in between. The objects are seemingly enigmatic, tools without buttons or signs without words. Adler puts material to this usually forgotten space past boundaries where our vantage point usually stops. Through emphasis on what is normally forgotten we are caught off guard in the best way before the work brings us back to resolve.
In her practice, Adler creates an ongoing narrative of dynamic objects, documenting their existence through reusing and building upon previous works. Static and mobile, these works heighten our observation of basic material properties to a full and enticing range of gestures and emotions.
When static, Inhalation hangs limp, the keel keeping parallel to the floor like a boat in calm seas. With the introduction of a breeze it begins a shallow breath, the tubes filling and flowing as air passes through. It acts as an organ of the building, documenting what we knew already was present, but could only feel before, like a poetic challenge.
Its counterpart, Exhalation, resides on the brick exterior, getting life force from a venting fan. As air pushes out from the interior of the building the tube inflates and swells, acting as a new appendage. Created from the cut material of its partner piece inside, it is a remnant of the initial work. This duo acts as a record, documenting both natural and made systems that reflect back our own body's necessities. We create a rhythm of breath while we watch these pieces move, flowing back at us in reciprocating motion.
Seemingly rising up out of the floor, Heavy Sigh sits in concrete, weighted and firm on the ground while the same piece in rubber, Giggle, bubbles up. The rubber casts seep from the wall down the floor, bridging the gap of the ubiquitous 90° angle. These works share the same proportion of circle to surrounding space as Inhalation, mirroring the pattern through completely different forms. These casts of the same form exemplify their distinct materials opposite expressions, functioning as connected dichotomies.
Hung on the walls are textile works drawn with ink and embroidered over the surface. Titled, Shadow of Invisible Barriers, the drawings map shadows of an earlier hanging sculpture, translating the previously ephemeral into a physical fingerprint. This continued workflow through various bodies of work creates a lineage that’s constantly reinforcing Adler’s material vernacular, a push and pull from fleeting into the physical and back again through time.
Spiring acts as a static measurement of wind or air movement, a nod to a tool or record. However, Adler has created the measurement herself through laboriously knitting wire tubes, a repetition of a three dimensional drawing creating form over time. These static limbs suspended mid blow, acting as archaeological casts of previous airflow through a flowing tube. The scale and static nature of these forms makes them feel monumental.
Adler has created a liminal space in this exhibition through rhythm and repetition of material, form, and color. There is a firm balance of presenting us with dichotomies to dissect as well as knowing where to create pause. It heightens recognizable materials to a place of contemplation, allowing them to function with their inherent qualities and constraints. The works in To Through emote their characteristics towards us in both functional disruption and enticement.