Utopia borders with Dystopia in Utopian Mirage exhibit

Joel Sternfeld, Ruins of Drop City, Trinidad

Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography and Film, currently on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY until July 29th, is an unusual exhibit for the Loeb and for most museums. Rather than a collection of well-established artists' pieces borrowed from museums and prestigious collections, this exhibition focuses on younger, up-and-coming artists with pieces borrowed from contemporary art galleries to comment upon this popular theme. The exhibit was curated by Mary Kay Lombino, who has been at the Loeb for barely 2 years, has taken the museum in this direction by also curating Off The Shelf: Contemporary Artists' Books which featured contemporary artists like Brian Belott and Beatriz Milhazes.

Unfortunately, Off The Shelf was a much more successful exhibit in choosing a varied and interesting group of new artists. Utopian Mirage's inclusions were less consistent and the extensive notes that accompany the exhibit seem at pains to justify every choice. Regardless, the exhibit does manage to make an interesting comment on the concept of utopia. Rather than the typical representations of utopia in books and films, which are temporal, this exhibit only depicts utopia through photographs and short films. Without the unraveling of a plot, inevitably showing how any utopia is deeply flawed, the photographs in particular seem to cut to the chase.

J. Bennett Fitts, whose work was also recently on display this past summer at the Julie Saul Gallery, shows the ruins of the American dream: emptied, dirty pools that almost become indistinguishable from the lifeless landscape that surrounds them. Utopia is clearly something that has long deserted these leisurely-cum-dangerous pools.

Unique to this exhibit, the work of Carlos Garaicoa seems to function in the opposite way. Rather than reflecting upon a brighter past, Garaicoa's photographs edited with string project possible futures. The artist takes photographs of derelict spaces and uses string to imagine them becoming grander structures, such as large buildings or bridges. Some are reconstructions, which appear better in string than they ever were in brick, and others are projections. The brightly colored, yet thin strings are hopeful but tenuous.

Tom Bamberger's digitally created panorama "Dark California Homes" emphasizes the disturbing sameness of suburban houses. The same issue was once noted by Dan Graham in his magazine piece "Homes for America," but Bamberger calls attention to the same phenomenon that has now spread to middle and upper class households producing a monoculture.

The exhibit's suggestions about utopia are bleak; the mirage is not a perfect island off into the distances, but rather a problem either insidious or blatant that stands right in front of us. Only a few viable suggestions are offered--environmentalism, new construction--but the audience's obligations and responsibilities towards a utopia are left open.

Above: J. Bennett Fitts, Salton Sea; Carlos Garaicoa, Untitled

Reclaiming Medieval Art for a Feminist Agenda

Today I went to the Cloisters for the first time. This small collection of Medieval art is something I've always wanted to visit, but not particularly because I draw inspiration or find a connection with the work there. It is merely a curiosity, beautiful works that I try to make some sense at by looking at dates and relying very heavily on placards. There was one piece, however, that struck me much more deeply than the awe-inspiring Unicorn Tapestries: a statue of Saint Margaret.

The story of St. Margaret was unexpected to me. Further research has lead me to a few tamer versions, but I'll stick to my favorite, courtesy of the Cloisters: Saint Margaret was scorned by her father who did not approve of her Christian beliefs. Olybrius offered to marry her if she would give up Christianity, but when she refused he cruelly beat her and tortured her. Part of this temptation away from Christianity, the scenario which is most often depicted, involved her getting swallowed by Satan in the form of a dragon. Her Christian tenacity saved her from being eaten, however, because she used the cross she was holding to pierce through the dragon and escape. The statue that is in the Cloisters depicts her standing atop a defeated devil.

This story, later declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius in the 5th Century and no longer meaningful within the Catholic Church, depicts an incredibly strong woman, both in mindset and physical strength. She resists two patriarchs for her beliefs, her father and her fiancee. She withstands torture and, what is particularly striking, battles a dragon and brutally rips open his body to escape. St. George was not the only saint on the block who could slay dragons. The story is reminiscent of a character much more commonly referenced in a feminist discourse: the goddess of wisdom and war, Athena, who sprung from Zeus' head fully armored in order to be born and never took a lover.

Less than GAGA for Garnerville's Art Festival

This weekend I attended Garnerville's 4th Annual GAGA Arts Festival. The festival consists of a large complex of beautiful former-industrial brick buildings that now house artists' studios. The artists open their studios, display their work, and invite the visitors to ask questions (and perhaps make purchases) over crackers.

Although the idea of seeing what local artists are working on is appealing, the majority of the art there was either a step above Thomas Kinkade or made by children and high school students. The "Soho of Rockland" houses art that is primarily painting, primarily landscape or nature-related, and commercially viable but not all that interesting. If you came looking for something more crafts-based or with a local tie, you instead found faux-New York that has obviously been disconnected from the gallery scene since...forever.

Despite the art scene there being dominated by the mediocre, it was still an interesting experience (at least for me but not my companions). Although I may not have been interested in their work, it was fascinating to see what people were doing outside of the Chelsea system. It was comforting to see that these artists sustained themselves by their work that they seemed to be doing on their own terms. There is a lot of freedom in the way that many of the artists at GAGA work and although they use it to create art that privileges the aesthetic and the technical, one can also imagine ways in which this mode of living and working could open the door to other freedoms.

Regardless, I did manage to find an artist whose work I really enjoy, Pat Hickman. A former professor and head of Fiber Arts program at University of Hawaii, Hickman's work is reminiscent of Kiki Smith's in material and occasionally style, but very distinct in tone and themes. Hickman's most striking work is created from organic materials, most commonly pig's intestines. Although the material she uses is one that would evoke disgust from most viewers, she transforms the material into a beautiful, thin golden skin-like material, such as in the piece to the right titled "One Size Fits All." The piece takes insides and turns them into outsides--clothes. But only superficially, as the piece itself admits by mimicking a paperdoll dress.

Another piece, "The Beginning of the Beginning," pictured on the left, uses notes and thread to create a tapestry of what looks like, upon close inspection, a series of small paper notes and to do lists. The threads cross off the items on the notes; the tasks are completed and subsumed into the larger work.

The works subtly evoke the feminine and the abject through clothes and association with craft and hobby. Unlike Kiki Smith's work, which uses the grotesque to comment on morbidity and illness, Hickman's work does not have such dark connotations. Rather, the work is a bit more ambiguous, mixing and confusing beauty and repulsiveness, mess and order.

To view more of Hickman's work, you'll unfortunately have to do your own research. There's limited information about her on the internet and no central gallery or artist's page, although you can find a few scattered pieces. You could also visit Garnerville, NY.