by Peter Delman
First, this show is the color of
photography— black and white photography.
Jeri Coppola, Me Without My Shadow
Second, unusual in a visual art
show, the featured sense is touch over sight. The hand of the artist, literally,
is everywhere. A very long arm and hand are animated by fluorescent light in Jeri
Coppola’s Me Without My Shadow, wrapped in a translucent skin of
hand-made paper.
Lee Arnold, The Swim
In Lee Arnold’s The Swim, a pair of hands sweep through
the bubbling sea, capturing the tactile quality of the water. As befitting a
show titled Just Beneath the Surface, the submerged swimmer periodically
comes up for air and glides through the choppy wavelets.
Katrina Bellow, Hawak/Hold (Kai)
Katrina Bello draws
handfuls of water, but the flesh itself has disappeared, with only the shape of
the water defining the cupped hand.
Caroline Burton, Incarnation 31
The textural surface of found afghans,
fabric sacks, and rabbit fur are printed or transferred onto canvas, hydrocal,
or bronze in Caroline Burton’s work.
Much of the work is a high-wire
act juggling the ephemeral and the physical.
Jeri Coppola, Listen, I Have Told You Everything
The delicate gray photographic
images in Coppola’s work are often battered with industrial sealant and paired
with wood and wire flotsam scavenged from under a sawhorse.
Caroline Burton, Figure 1p
Burton’s rabbit fur
is far from fluffy. It looks like the remnants of an ancient bogman’s pet — or
dinner—preserved in bronze.
Memory is a touchstone for these
artists. The memories here are often wrapped in an enigma.
Katrina Bello, Hawak/Hold (8.832, -124.5085)
Bello’s charcoal
meditations on the Pacific Ocean focus on the eddies that swirl water from
below to the surface. The eddies and the vast ocean itself may be seen as a
metaphor for the memories of her experience of migration from the Philippines,
and her subsequent family narrative.
Caroline Burton, Incarnation 2
Burton’s Incarnation 2 suggests a
looming barrier from a child’s eye view—The Tower of Babel perhaps, or
fittingly, a stairway to heaven.
Lee Arnold, Stereo
Stereo, originally shot in super 8mm
film by Arnold, pairs unassuming, graceful images of travels in Europe with the
blurred “memory” of the same shots reduced to mild gray shapes nearing the
vanishing point.
The deft orchestration of this
exhibition by curator Anne Trauben leaves room for interpretation by the viewer
but consistently brings us back to common ground. In Stereo, a panoramic
shot of high divers breaking the surface of water is followed by a seal gliding
just under the surface and then playfully emerging from below. In other work,
the reference may be nuanced, but we are invited to consider the surface represented
and the significance of what is to be discovered beneath.
This work contemplates empty
places, often with a sense of understated spirituality, as distinct from
religion or faith. Touring the exhibition might be seen as visiting points on a
roadmap to the sublime, reminiscent of the intention of Hudson River School
artists in the nineteenth century. The artists often rely on their sense of
touch in order to consider the void.
This show aspires to a state of
grace and sometimes rises to the level of Baudelaire’s definition of beauty, “a
spark between something fleeting and something timeless”.
Lee Arnold, Walpurgis Nacht
Exhibit A is Arnold’s
video Walpurgis Nacht in which alpen peaks, the place where Thomas Mann
wrote Magic Mountain, seem to breathe clouds of mist. I half expected
Caspar David Friedrich to emerge from the fog. The show’s monochromatic
austerity can be intoxicating. When you leave the exhibit, the red brick
warehouses and chirpy blue July sky may seem a touch trashy by comparison.
Just Beneath the Surface, 7/11/19 - 8/11/19, featuring works by Katrina Bello, Caroline Burton, Lee Arnold and Geri Coppola is curated by Anne Trauben.
Just Beneath the Surface, 7/11/19 - 8/11/19, featuring works by Katrina Bello, Caroline Burton, Lee Arnold and Geri Coppola is curated by Anne Trauben.