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Exposure 11

13 August 2008 in Reviews

As August rolls on, the number of artistic events dwindles. Gallery 210 director Terry Suhre takes advantage of that by scheduling his annual survey of local artists for August and September.

The space is small, so only a few artists can be shown at a time. This year, the 11th in the series, there are only three: Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Andrew Millner and Snail Scott.

Suhre and an occasional guest curator tend to find new or overlooked artists who can use the exposure, and they present more frequently shown artists as if they are new kids on the block. The exhibitions, at least the ones I’ve seen, often tend to be fresh and invigorating.

OLIVIA LAHS-GONZALES

Lahs-Gonzales is the best-known person exhibiting, but as director of the Sheldon Art Galleries rather than as an artist. In fact, Lahs-Gonzales has long practiced photography, and she says in her artist’s statement that she has been investigating “our dichotomous relationship with nature” for the past 15 years.

If you’ve paid attention, you might have seen backyard images by her of a sun-lit lawn from the vantage point of an ant. They have always seemed smart and promising.

There are more such pictures here — some taken at the Shaw Arboretum, a wilder, more overgrown place than her backyard — but she is also showing a video projection and some wall pieces made of dried vines and lacy dried hot-glue. Neither experimental body of work is ready for prime time.

The video is of the same subject as the photographs: microscopic views of forest underbrush gently moving in the breeze. The photographs are characterized by bright clear color. The video images, by contrast, are dark and murky.

While the photographs capture a sense of the marvelous, there is no mystery or sense of the immanent in the video. Indeed, the project comes across as inept. (Suhre said that the painted wall on which the video is projected is not ideal and contributes to its murkiness.)

The dried vine and hot-glue pieces are even more amateurish. One wonders what the artist was thinking. The low point is a lacy hot-glue piece draped over the video projector like an antimacassar. Was Lahs-Gonzales trying to hide the invasive piece of technology from her re-creation of the forest primeval? If so, it is ineffective, to say the least.

One small piece — a patch of lacy, dried hot-glue nestled in a tight nestlike crown of dried vines — shows a way to go. It has a rightness the other pieces don’t.

ANDREW MILLNER: ‘Cribbed Cacti’

Millner’s mural-scale, computer-generated drawings, like those of Lahs-Gonzales, also address nature, in this case a cactus garden that seems to have taken over the Earth, or at least two abutting walls in the gallery.

His work of the past couple of years has been deeply rewarding, a seamless wedding of hand and machine. This project only extends what one hopes will be a long and successful exploration.

Millner, who was a painter earlier in his career, has discovered that by drawing — tracing photographs, really — directly onto the computer and printing out the product, he can reinvigorate drawing, a medium that has been reinvigorated in any number of ways in recent years.

At the William Shearburn Gallery in 2006, he showed his breakthrough work: images of trees and bushes — every branch, no matter how small, every leaf, clearly delineated — printed in pale lines on dark paper, some sheets black, burgundy and reddish-brown.

Here, he reveals that he has fallen for the color printer. His operatic suite of images are rendered in red, lavender, green, blue and black line on a slightly crinkly colorless paper, each sheet about 3-by-5 feet in size.

The papers are not arranged neatly in gridlike formation. They follow the image, overlapping, meeting the wall in an irregularly edged pattern. The arrangement of the sheets suggests the explosion of growth that occurs in nature.

Formal arrangements are not the attraction here, however. It is the pure plenitude of nature. Cacti of every sort and type crowd the sheets to the effect of delirium. (Millner calls the work a “crib sheet” of images “cribbed” from numerous sources.)

This is quietly ecstatic art born of hard, essentially tedious work, and it is a thrill to see it.

SNAIL SCOTT: ‘Span’

“Exposure 11” would have been tied up neatly with a bow if the third artist also dealt with nature, but the contrary is true. Scott’s work is about architecture and engineering, both of which are attempts to create a world of one’s desire, she says in her gallery statement.

The installation seems to be pretty straightforward, a formal construction of elements from building — I-beams and arched armatures. They are all painted blue, “the hue of the sublime.” A large I-beam descends from the ceiling at a diagonal to meet a smaller perforated beam that is installed parallel to the floor. The arched element crosses beneath them at another diagonal. Nice, but so what?

Then you notice that none of these heavy objects are being visibly held up. Arrowheaded plumb lines made of rope seem to be the only support, but they have no tensile strength.

Is this not a work of art but a miracle?

I don’t want to give it away. I was perplexed and examined the piece over and over again until I finally had to touch it. But let’s just say that what something seems is not always what it is.

Whatever else Scott thinks she is doing,v she has created a witty piece of illusionist art. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

dbonetti@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8351