wonderland

Baltimore City Paper
January 14 - January 20, 2004

ART

Wonderland

60 pieces by 24 artists make for one freewheeling survey of contemporary art

By J. Bowers

Contemporary Art From Around the World
At Gallery International through Jan. 28

If the winter blahs have left you craving a little humor, a lot of variety, and a few creepy, automatonlike statues (and who isn't, really?), it might be worth your while to take a peek at Gallery International's current wonderland
of intercultural delights.

Designed to bring together a cross section of contemporary work that encompasses a variety of styles, media, and price ranges, Contemporary Art From Around the World features more than 60 pieces by 24 international artists, along with work from six Baltimore-based artists and a few other American notables. China, Spain, Norway, Russia, Uruguay, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom are all well-represented here. Media on display include bronze, wood, oils, found objects, bamboo, photographs, ceramics, and watercolors--and that's just scratching the surface. Pieces cluster on pedestals, slouch against convenient corners, and act as chic paperweights on the curator's desk. With the proper curiosity-shop attitude, it's impossible not to pick something likable out of the crowd.

Take the whimsical, witty ceramic sculptures of Baltimore's Tom Supensky. A trained potter on a one-man mission to redefine clay's stereotypical status as a "craft" medium, Supensky manipulates coils of material into compact scenes that combine small animals, inconsequential man-made objects, and solid, earthy bases. Anthropomorphic without succumbing to cuteness, Supensky's animals possess genuine sass--particularly the bright green, shiny-eyed lizard who crowns "100 Years Down the Drain," an intestinal-looking clay sink decorated with imprints of typewriter letters. "Games People Play" has a more subdued charm, as Supensky stacks molded chess pieces, playing cards, dice, and a dart atop a gilded checkerboard. The freewheeling, Alice in Wonderland ambience of the composition is balanced by the piece's animal element--two sparrows who clutch a golden wedding band between their tiny blue beaks, turning the work's seemingly innocent title into a sly commentary on marital bliss.

If Supensky dabbles in the land of the Jabberwocky, Uruguayan sculptor Cecilia Miguez plunges right through the looking glass with her creepily charismatic human figures, fashioned out of bronze, wood, and various antique found objects. Simultaneously evoking Greek kouros statues, the aforementioned automatons, and roughnecked Renaissance courtiers, Miguez's surreal statuettes juxtapose believable human proportions with freakish, often disturbing inhuman elements. "Figure With Crossed Legs" wears giant wooden clogs on his feet and the remnants of a brass telescope as a stovepipe hat, while "Skier," one of the largest works in the exhibit, stands astride two pieces of wood with a beatific expression on his face, despite the fact that he has a cabinet where his torso should be and a monkey emerging from his unlocked gut.

"Aluminum Foil," by the late American photographer Jimmy DeSana, walks a similar tightrope between man and machine by transforming a stereotypical beach-side love scene into something almost alien. Completely covered by layers of aluminum foil and uplit with subtle purple lighting, DeSana's paired lovers embrace despite their inability to see one another or the outside world, so tightly that it's difficult to discern where one ends and the other begins. Meanwhile, a pair of paintings from Japanese artist TKL Kizimecca explores human interaction through the interchange of fluids and body parts. "Neoteny in Spirit #3" focuses on a pair of dismembered, blue-veined arms, sutured together at the stumps, while "Neoteny in Spirit #4" depicts two youthful bodies that have been cut to ribbons--one character, lobotomized, watches his/her brain topple across the dark floor, its stem unraveled like an electrical cord, while a companion looks on.

Less visceral but more evocative, Korean artist Jean S. Rah's work carries itself with natural grace. "The Dreamer" is a grid of smooth wooden squares, planed into sweeping, topographic peaks and valleys that culminate in a nipplelike bump at the piece's center. A smaller work, "Beyond the Voyage," employs a similar technique, then surrounds the wooden squares with a sea-foam green painting of flowers, feathers, fishtails, and human faces. All abstracted, the painted elements possess a trompe l'oeil quality, appearing almost as three-dimensional as Rah's wooden squares.

Local artist Laura Amussen also draws inspiration and materials from the natural world. "Atresia I" and "II" are panpipe arrangements of cut bamboo, wired together and stuffed with sea sponges dyed red, while the knotted grasses of "Vessel I" and "II" suggest pendulous oriole nests and African tribal crafts.

Of course, no adventure in Wonderland would be complete without an eerie vial of uncertain liquids. British artist Leigh Maddox delivers with "Bottled at Source," a magical-looking wax-sealed mixture of water from locations throughout England (and Pikesville, oddly enough), all packaged with a label listing "Mineral Analysis, Typical Values" in handy milliliter-per-liter increments. The result is an amusing jab at the modern bottled-water industry--Maddox funneled in a generous serving of sand and sediment alongside her 28 ml of Preston and 305 ml of Selsey.

As a whole, Contemporary Art From Around the World is a hit-and-miss hodgepodge of established artists and newcomers, Americans and internationals, fully realized concepts and half-baked experiments--and, honestly, it's all a little bit overwhelming at first. The good news is, there's plenty of quality to be found amid this massive quantity of work.