The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show at The Terrarium Gallery at Drawing Rooms, 9/29/23 - 11/11/23

A Walk-Through of Constructed Identities in “The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show”
By Mona Brody
11/8/23

"The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show", curated by Anne Trauben, is showing in the Drawing Rooms Terrarium Gallery. The artists in this group exhibition have constructed identities in the form of installation, sculpture, photography, video, mixed media, drawing, painting, and sound. Trauben’s clear curatorial vision tells a broader story of archetypes, alter egos, historical referencing, and fantastical experiences for the viewer.

As I walked through the gallery, Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego, Mademoiselle Rrose Sélavy kept haunting me. Marcel Duchamp assumed the role of a seductive woman, displaying playfulness, fantasy, and the irony of Dadaism. His fellow artist and Dada collaborator, Man Ray, often photographed Duchamp’s adopted female persona dressed in a stylish 1920’s coat and hat.

Diamonds are a Queen's Best Friend by Christy E. O'Connor

A Dressing Room for Marie Antoinette, an installation by Christy E. O’Connor, achieved that transformative experience for me. The tiny white dressing room glowed in sparkling light, its scale suggestive of a child’s playhouse created an alternative world where Marie, in costume, danced to dream-like music in a video. I was transported into her fairytale of historical fiction and magic; I did not want to leave.

Changing Rooms by Bayard

Bayard, a multidisciplinary artist with a background in fashion design and costume, asks the participant to enter “Changing Rooms”, a 6’ x 9’ installation imbued with an abundance of multi-colored rags layered in this created space. The experience was reminiscent of an early 1900’s rag shop in the Lower East Side of New York. Was it a narrative of the people who might have given up tattered clothing for a fee? What was the real history behind the cloth?

Starlette by Poramit Thantapalit

Poramit Thantapalit’s figure appears with its outstretched wings, “a Phoenix” rising from the ashes. “Starlette” was created from recycled, corrugated cardboard composed of triangular cutouts,. uses staples to attach the triangular forms. This carefully assembled creature comes forward with a need for nature’s rebirth metaphorically and, literally, an imminent concern for sustainability.

Underpinnings #7 by Margery Amdur

Margery Amdur, a fiber artist, is a master at using the sewing machine. She has created a relief sculpture, “Underpinnings #7”, composed of vertical forms that are wrapped, stitched together, seemingly to protect. She brings to life through abstraction and repetition the need for human touch and support. I am reminded of a print by Henry Moore, “Tube Shelter, Perspective,”.This work was created during World War II in England; masses of people are huddled together sheltering from danger in an underground tunnel.

Are You Sure You Want to Be Mikey Mouse? by Miki Katagiri

Miki Katagiri, an expert milliner, using traditional hand craftsmanship to design, make, and trim, creates exquisite hats, but with a twist. Her hats are made from felt, fox fur, miniature toys, plants, and more; they cry out to protect nature, our environment, and pay attention to our universe. “Are You Sure You Want to Be Mikey Mouse?” is a satirical hat that has a toy meerkat sitting on fur, surrounded by Mickey Mouse ears, questioning life.

Caput by Kate Dodd

Kate Dodd’s imaginary headgear, “Caput”, is made from repurposed reference material. Keeping in mind its fragility, the work could easily be destroyed. The sculpture is meticulously assembled and painted with delicate colors resembling aged patinated metal. The materiality of the piece suggests vulnerability; curiously its structure suggests protection. The play of duality is what makes it compelling.

Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #7 (L) by Nina Katchadourian
Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #10 (R) by Nina Katchadourian

Nina Katchadourian, a photographer, videographer, and sound artist, takes witty self-portraits in which she portrays herself in a variety of ordinary settings. Utilitarian materials, such as toilet paper, which beautifully embellish the collar of her dress, and the mirror from the airplane’s bathroom are her immediate resources. These images are taken with her cell phone. “Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #10” is one such photograph. This fictionalized 17th century moody Dutch painting could have been a work created by Johannes Vermeer.

Braid Mask by gwen charles

gwen charles works in video, photography, sculpture, and performance. Like Nina Katchadourain, she uses her own body as an exploration of the female experience. Her photograph, “Braid Mask”, appears to emerge from a dream and historical referencing. Her evocative use of hair braids to cover parts of her face suggests fantasy and sexual promiscuity from a time gone by.

Mother by Donna Conklin King

The artist, Donna Conklin King, tells the story of a woman’s life lived. Her work on paper, “Mother”, begins with a worn shirtwaist dress from the 1970s. The dress is a matrix for a monoprint and mixed media; charcoal, an x-ray, and chalk pastel all beautifully drawn to express the portrayal of the fictional mother without arms or a face.

When an artist, with intention or not, creates an alter ego, what is the result? An artist may need distance from their artwork to provide clarity and a true understanding of the direction their art practice is taking. The artists in this exhibition designed a fictional framework as an essential part of their art, and when combined with its creator, the total proves to be a new and meaningful whole.

"The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show" will continue on view at Drawing Rooms Terrarium Gallery until November 11, 2023.

Mona Brody is an artist whose studio is at Manufacturers Village in East Orange, New Jersey. Learn more about Mona here.

Somewhere Over the Interconnected Rainbow & Prospero's Grand St. Masque, 6/8/18 - 6/10/18 at Drawing Rooms

by Kate Dodd
6/12/18

Drawing Rooms’ final show at their Grand St. location, entitled Somewhere Over the Interconnected Rainbow & Prospero’s Grand St Masque, 6/8/18 - 6/10/18, is taken from diametrically opposed literary sources, Edgar Allen Poe and Frank Baum. The theme of this show was born of a brainstorming session between Exhibitions Director & Curator Anne Trauben and Executive Director James Pustorino. While the ending of Poe’s "The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy", of 1842, occupies the realm of the catastrophic, quite the opposite results when the story’s title is appropriated for thematic purposes. Anne became the Curator in 2014, and as with every show at Drawing Rooms, she has found a way to unify differences intelligently, often making more than a sum of the parts/art they display.

Again and again, as all who have shown and/or visited this gallery over its five highly transformative years know, the impossible gets pulled off with panache. The core of the challenge of this space, to make big ideas work in little rooms that function individually and as a whole, is parallel to the definition of community. And that is exactly what the final show in this particular venue presents: a skilled and diverse group of people that share the belief that art not only can build community, but is essential to the health and growth of communities.

Part of the pleasure of group shows is finding unexpected connections, and this show provides that in spades. While color acts as the overarching organizational concept, themes such as found abstraction, examination of natural phenomena, tension between 2 and 3-dimensional surfaces, visceral use of materials, intention, and accident are just a few of the relationships that become apparent by traveling from room to room. 

Highlights include the obsessive mark-making of Harriet Finck, James Pustorino, Injoo Whang, Ellie Murphy and Elizabeth Onorato.

Harriet Finck

James Pustorino

Injoo Whang

Ellie Murphy

Elizabeth Onorato

Megan Klim, Maggie Ens, Jaynie Crimmins, and Gianluca Bianchino take that impulse into the third dimension.

Megan Klim

Maggie Ens

Jaynie Crimmins

Gianluca Bianchino

The serial aesthetic in these works contrasts dramatically with the allegiance to gesture in the works of Robin Feld, Stephanie DeManuelle, Rich White, and Jaz Graf. 

Robin Feld

Stephanie DeManuelle

Rich White

Jaz Graf

Surreal scenes employ humor in the works of Cheryl Gross, Bill Rybak, Raisa Nosova, Carol Radsprecher, and Jodie Fink.  

Cheryl Gross

Bill Rybak

Raisa Nosova

Carol Radsprecher

Jodie Fink

Intimate observations of nature range from Ed Fausty’s rock portraits to Nan Ring’s pinecone print to Sharon Sinton’s penguin studies and Jade Lowder’s graphite leaves. 

Ed Fausty

Nan Ring

Sharon Sinton

Jade Lowder

And of course, the human figure sneaks into each room in works by Winifred McNeil, Mauro Altamura, Gilbert Giles, and Samm Cohen. These are but a few of the discoveries offered among over 300 artworks.

Winifred McNeill

Mauro Altamura

Gilbert Giles

Samm Cohen

Should you decide to browse the archives on the gallery website, the inventive titles of past exhibits, not to mention the range of high-quality art from past shows, will affirm the rich legacy of art that has graced 180 Grand St. since 2012. Drawing Rooms has hit the sweet spot during its time here: the gallery has provided the satisfying experience of looking at a single artist’s output while simultaneously contemplating thematic overlaps between artists, something solo shows can’t do and group shows rarely achieve. While this feat seems aligned with the physical parameters implicit in the Jersey City convent site, I suspect that the real genius lies in the more than capable hands of Anne, which means we have a tremendous amount to look forward to as Drawing Rooms begins its reincarnation in their new space.

Somewhere Over the Interconnected Rainbow & Prospero's Grand St. Masque, 6/8/18 - 6/10/18, is Drawing Rooms' final exhibition at the former convent. The exhibit is curated by Anne Trauben.

Kate Dodd is an artist and an art teacher in public and private schools for 25 years. Read Kate's bio here and view her artwork here.

Sup-A-Genius: The Five Guy Show, 9/22/17 - 11/11/17, at Drawing Rooms

Harvest/Time

by Kate Dodd

10/11/17

All of the works in Sup-A-Genius, a show of five installations currently at Drawing rooms, deal with aspects of harvesting and time. The artists were all selected because of their tendency towards work that “works”, that labors and produces, as any good invention will. These are makers making something make something else, and as such, it is worth looking at both their process and their product.

Joe Chirchirillo

Joe Chirchirillo has been making heavy-duty sculpture for a long time. Here he puts his collection of implements to use to create a water cycle, aka a gravity-fed fountain that fills the room with a sort of creaky bucket brigade made up of old farm containers. In one corner, a separate mechanism spins sporadically, marked by a propeller wing labeled water on one side and wind on the other. Its laconic movement, along with the complex arrangement of the aged vessels, creates a sense of abandonment, as if the resources of wind and water have dwindled to a trickle, and all that’s left is the labor of this mechanism, determined to continue regardless of the existence of any resources, while the repeated sound cycle marks the ceaselessness of time passing.

Anthony Fisher

Anthony Fisher has drawings and a video showcasing his process, along with some of what might be his drawing tools, on display. The black and white drawings range in scale; all feature mysterious marks, some made up of several drawings that are inlaid into each other. Delicate lines wrap around themselves on a ground that looks tough, grey, pocked by grit. This toughness connects to the brutish tools nearby, made up of weights and wheels on brooms. The video of Fisher arduously pushing heavy implements over paper on his studio floor supplies the link that reveals his process. Jackson Pollock meets Chris Burden. One could consider these drawings machine-made, albeit with significant labor on the manufacturer’s part, with the traces of the tools’ movement as the product being created; Fisher then “harvests” the raw material he has cultivated and fashions it into drawings and collages, elegant records of sheer willpower.

Roger Sayre

Roger Sayre actually uses his room as his portrait photography studio, complete with a refurbished clinical chair for clients and a large pinhole camera. The challenge here is to sit still enough, long enough, while staring at oneself in a mirror Sayre has rigged up, to result in a fixed image. A conflated Warhol Screen Test of sorts. Portraits done in this manner line the walls, in both black and white and color, each seeming to reveal its subject as if through a long journey from a distant place. The color portraits, in particular, refer to the myth of Narcissus, with the liquid-y backdrop suggesting that we’re actually peering through water at the subject floating beyond us, a reflection but not the real thing. These are the opposite of selfies; they require an attempt at introspection on the part of the subject rather than the masked pose marking one’s non-present presence at places or events of note. Sayre is distilling the essence of time spent with a disciplined will.

Kurt Steger

Kurt Steger’s work asks participants to give freely and endlessly of their time as well, although one would not know it by looking. His drawings of perfect circles in rich earthy hues on immaculate white paper make one think of a highly singular force.  The controlled drops of toxic water that create these rings contradict the purity of form, but don’t reveal the communal process required to manage such exactness. To create these, Steger asks participants to tend to the melting drips at the end of a swinging plumb line by rotating the paper surface that they land on; he hopes to create a communal experience reminiscent of tending a fire while sharing stories and wisdom. He has set up a contraption to illustrate this, although its diorama-like scale leaves it functionless, making the connection between the vagaries of people’s informal communal abilities and the refinement of Steger’s circles hard to reconcile.

John Morton

Fittingly, John Morton’s audio installation challenges us to not only participate in this harvesting of human will, but to believe in it as an action that will yield results. Belief is the subject of Fever Songs, a series of recordings of spiritual ecstasy from cultures around the world. As with other proximity sensor-driven pieces, this one requires experimentation and patience. Without enough movement around the room, aka participation on the part of the viewer, the sounds retreat to silence, possibly beckoning you back only as you walk out the door. The absence of voices prompts one to try again, to actually have faith that one’s presence is the thing that initiates action, a clear parallel to engagement with spiritual practice. The sensor acts as a god, reflecting back whatever one is willing to invest.

Each “Sup-A Genius” invention in this show suggests that a process will produce a product. Whether Sisyphean or hopeful, all of these works evoke a sense of effort, of sheer will, of “I will make this happen despite all odds” adding up to a mood of eloquent desperation in a world where effort doesn’t necessarily determine the outcome.

Sup-A-Genius: The Five Guy Show, 9/22/17 - 11/11/17, at Drawing Rooms, features works by Joe Chirchirillo, Anthony Fisher, Roger Sayre, Kurt Steger and John Morton. The exhibit is curated by Anne Trauben.

Kate Dodd is an artist and an art teacher in public and private schools for 25 years. Read Kate's bio here and view her artwork here.