Seeking Fertile Solitude at Mills Elizabeth Michelman “Fertile Solitude,” an exhibition of installation and video art, photography, painting and sculpture at the Mills Gallery, is hidden in a warren of makeshift rooms and corners behind latticework and green hedge panels. Guest curator Elizabeth Devlin’s layout seeks to apply to artists a theory by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips about developing young adults: unconsciously they need solitude — in the potential presence of another — in which to “endanger” their bodies and “experiment with representations of it” on their route to self-definition. The tension of risk within protective boundaries shapes the exhibition in both process and results. Our curiosity is piqued — as we wander among these very distinct spaces and objects — by the emphasis on things and materials. Is it planned that two artists focus on cigarette ash, or … [Read more...] about No Risk, No Return
November/December 2016
A Diverse Array in Bowdoin
The Renaissance, 19th Century and Robert Frank Eric J. Taubert The recently renovated Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine — which is open to the public at no charge — has scheduled a diverse array of exhibitions through the winter (and beyond) that can be perused together during a single visit. “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read the line of a poem twice.” — Robert Frank Everyone knows Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank from his iconic photographic study “The Americans” (1958), which Peter Schjeldahl, art critic at The New Yorker, called “one of the basic American masterpieces of any medium.” In “The Americans,” Frank found his subject matter in recurrent themes of the American flag; automobiles; race; restaurants and dark, low-gloss glimpses at the inner life and outer fringes of post-war … [Read more...] about A Diverse Array in Bowdoin
Abstracts and Artifacts
Coming Together in Tiverton Suzanne Volmer “ab•stracts & art•i•facts,” the current exhibition at Gallery 4 in Tiverton, Rhode Island, blends artworks by eight contemporary artists with ancient and classic artifacts. The gallery occupies the main floor of a yellow clapboard building at the town’s historic main intersection. Tiverton is an off-thebeaten-path kind of place situated between Boston and Newport on the map, and getting there by land involves driving along some idyllic scenic byways. It’s a seaside town that rambles, and its core is an intimate cluster of shops known for antiques and contemporary art. Weathered grey shingles are a staple of the region, so the gallery’s yellow façade presents a perk of subtle color in the landscape. Gallery 4 has a surrounding lawn that it utilizes to exhibit sculpture. A horse and other outdoor sculptures made of welded steel … [Read more...] about Abstracts and Artifacts
School Daze
Jerzyk and McCabe at Derryfield Greg Morell How is it that the strange, provocative and cryptic images of Manchester, New Hampshire photographer Karen Jerzyk have found themselves on the walls of a posh New England private school? Was it the intercession of a curator, an art director or a faculty administrator who first discovered the photographer? No, it was a student, a high school junior who brought the work of this remarkable image-maker to the attention of the faculty and staff at the Derryfield School. Brooke Northrup is an art student at the day school where yearly tuition soars to over $30,000. A unique style of education is available to the 400 students who can afford the hefty sum. Brooke fell under the spell of Jerzyk’s images while probing the Internet. She noticed that the photographer was living and working in nearby Manchester and came up with the idea of … [Read more...] about School Daze
Capsule Preview
Brian Goslow It’s a priority for Robert Freeman to introduce himself as an African American artist, one who is best known regionally for his 1981 work, “Black Tie,” now part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s permanent collection and originally part of a series that explored his personal experiences settling into middle-class life after the racial tensions that enveloped the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s. Three and a half decades later, he’s revisiting themes of race and culture in “Robert Freeman New Works,” eight oil paintings of African Americans at formal social events, including two large triptychs — one installed as an altarpiece — from November 4 through December 18 at Adelson Galleries Boston, 520 Harrison Ave., Boston. While his exhibition statement notes that much has changed over the past halfcentury — “including the election of the nation’s first African … [Read more...] about Capsule Preview
No Man’s Land at Chazan
Ganz and Tibbs Make It Their Own Suzanne Volmer “No Man’s Land” at Chazan Gallery features photographic collage works by Theresa Ganz and Millee Tibbs. Each artist blends contemporary perspectives with conventions of 19th century American landscape photography. It is a period reference that marks a nascent moment when landscape photography went mainstream in America; a time when the use of the medium was male-driven and aligned with westward expansion and ideas about Manifest Destiny. Balking at the sense of male entitlement on many levels, Ganz and Tibbs have appropriated the era’s sense of wonder about the sublime framed in iconic natural vistas, and they have reworked the romantic content so that their contemporary statements supersede previous meaning to create an intimate tactile experience in the present. Both artists present photographic collages created by … [Read more...] about No Man’s Land at Chazan