Photo courtesy of Locks Gallery.

Across all the walls are floor-to-ceiling projections and interspersed amongst the few round columns in the big room are projectors, speakers, wires, headphones, and some small seats. A few flat HD monitors lie between the larger projections. Smaller, brighter, and higher resolution than their larger projected counterparts, the little monitors offer a welcomed degree of variance to the flow of moving pictures.

Some of the most immediately apparent images are those of Chinese parades and Communist regalia, some of which are glitchy and crisscrossed by rotating 3D cubes. The title 1967 is a reference to Jean-Luc Godard’s film La Chinoise which deals with a group of French students planning to change the world in a Communist revolution while studying Mao. Hironaka and Suib’s installation is a looped montage of clips from Godard’s film, original video, archival footage of the 1967 World Exposition in Montreal paired with Shanghai’s 2010 Expo, protest scenes past and present, and of course images from China’s cultural revolution.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy, and similar protest movements worldwide, the themes of this show are aptly timed to say the least. The installation acts as an intrigue into the roles of the artist and the revolutionary in society. Ideas of social orthodoxy, equality, and belief systems all come to mind. At times political upheaval is warranted, at other times dissent is quashed; sometimes revolution is widely supported, other times it happens by coup d’état. Regardless of the means for or reaction to social shifts, their inevitability looms outside the realms of political affiliation. In a universe where entropy rules, the only real guarantee is change.

The yin and yang of protest as illustrated by Ram Dass in Be Here Now.

As the images break down, the prevailing power structures emerge as targets of ridicule in much the same way as the protests themselves. This inherent yin-yang image of action and reaction has been similarly noted by Ram Dass in his “hippies create police/police create hippies” musing from 1971’s Be Here Now. In situations as diverse and interrelated as governing a country, it would appear that neither side has a monopoly on truth.

The characters in La Chinoise are dilettantes in a way, as young people romanticizing the concept of revolt. Much can be said about the need for economic equality or restructured government in the United States, but one also wonders how many supporters of either Ron Paul or Occupy Wall Street are on their respective bandwagons for questionable or superficial reasons. Thinking back to the beginnings of revolution in Tahrir Square, it is not hard to believe that the cinematic broadcasts on news and infotainment channels the world over helped to spur similar protests, in part, because of their excitement and danger. The mundane ennui of middle-class American youth can at least not be ruled out as a cause, in any case.

Photo courtesy of Locks Gallery.

When the silly, almost childish images of roosters and other animal “comrades” are displayed on the cover of Mao’s Little Red Book in place of his idealized face, the absurdity crests and begins to give way to other relevant questions. The phrase “Is it important to take action?” appears as the game-changing caption. Of course the artists provide no concrete answers, and pose only the question. However this is arguably one of the more important responsibilities of artists: to test the waters of antithesis and throw wrenches into the gears of established social mechanisms. Artists and revolutionaries – sometimes one in the same – have quite regularly shared many similar goals such as exposing outdated concepts, offering new ways of viewing surroundings, and often subscribing to a brand of humanism with a thirst for justice and equality.

Locks Gallery’s exhibition of 1967 dissects the topic of protest in a way that only artists can. With revolution being, by its very existence, bound to its intended target, an absurd presentation seems fitting – perhaps necessary. Protest is distorted through media channels and personal interpretations, and it is certainly no science. Dogma is dogmatic regardless of political preferences. Hironaka and Suib demonstrate that, no matter what side you’re on, the complex schisms of human argument and opposition are not quite as objective and clear cut as they seem.

There will be a live performance in the installation on January 28 at 5 PM by contributing artists C. Spencer Yeh and Aaron Moore; and another reception on Feb 3.  Check the website for more information and events.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib Provisional Monument for the New Revolution, 2011 multi-channel video installation dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists

Local artists Matt Suib and Nadia Hironaka portray loneliness in a crowded setting in a piece that’s both political and poignant. “Provisional Monument for the New Revolution” is a large, multi-channel video projection with sound that wraps around two walls and envelops you in a black-and-white, barely moving image of protesters in an urban square in some Middle East country. In the grainy, X-ray-like scene, it’s impossible to tell exactly where these people are. The ambiance is spooky. The sound, which is not the sound of the crowd, swells from a quiet hum to a rhythmic ticking that grows so insistent it commands the air space in the gallery. What little motion there is has been frozen into a never-ending stuttering. If you approach the wall, your shadow gets projected on the video and you become a giant black hole in the crowd, a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit. You are alone in their crowd.

Lucas Ajemian and Julien Bismuth Set Pieces, 2008 digital video (color, sound) and powder coated steel dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York

Julien Bismuth’s and Lucas Ajemian’s work features side-by-side video monitors that show them talking during their collaboration, often like a couple on the verge of divorce. The pair makes videos (as part of the show they’ve made bright green metal sculptures that echo foam-core sculptures in the videos), they write (you can take a free selection of their newsprint zines from the downstairs lobby), and they seem obsessed with alphabet letters and symbols. The art seems argumentative without reason, but the zines contain a lot of good writing and are much more personable.

The companion totems of clay and wood by Nicole Cherubini and Taylor Davis are a palette cleanser in this show. The way the materials are put down—a glob of clay here; a stick of wood there—makes the pieces likeable, albeit not as memorable.

Megawords Megawords Installation, 2011 dimensions variable mixed media Courtesy of Megawords

Less likeable is Nick Mauss’ and Ken Okiishi’s “One Season in Hell,” an update of the 1873 Arthur Rimbaud poem A Season in Hell. The framed book pages are displayed on the wall but it’s far too much to read or even look at in a gallery. Perhaps a little desk and the book itself to flip through would have been more in keeping with the intimacy of the piece. Framed pages are not engaging and make the book more precious than it maybe is.

The opposite of precious, Megawords collaborators Dan Murphy’s and Tony Smyrski’s raucous installation on the mezzanine has a jumble of photos, adolescent-boy memorabilia and a handmade display desk and chair. The installation is upbeat, energetic and affirmative about life lived, times experienced and collective memory.

Sam Green, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and Mrs. Al Paul Lefton Jr. of Villanova at the Factory. Photograph originally published in the October 1, 1965 Philadelphia Bulletin. Courtesy of the Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives.

Don’t miss the Andy Warhol documentary show in the Project Space, which tells the story of Warhol’s 1965 exhibit at the ICA and includes a great piece by Alex Da Corte (a Romeo and Juliet-style balcony filled with a large silver bouquet.) It’s a fabulous tribute the pop artist would love.

Alex Da Corte Silver Screen, 2011 MDF, wood, enamel paint, foam, glue, bucket, silver spray paint, epoxy resin, cable, grapes, baby powder, plastic flowers, shampoo, conditioner, soda, acrylic rods, and plastic bags 90 x 66 inches Courtesy of the artist

Read this at Philly Weekly.

Through Aug. 7. Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St. 215.898.7108/5911. icaphila.org

Powell House Entry Hall, Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks

Paloma and Raul in San Serriffe by filmmaker J. Makary, on view in March,  used the site to connote wealth and historical interiors, rather than invoking its own particular history. Her short narrative, itself set in the fictional San Serife (which was a famous April Fool’s day hoax of a London newspaper) was a domestic intrigue with dancers carrying on an abstract pantomime of the emotional goings-on. It had something of the look of a 1960s French film and the eavesdropping it showed was carried out with appropriately-dated technology of reel-to-reel tape.  The eighteenth-century rooms implied a location, and perhaps a social class, that is conscious of its heritage. The clear artifice of the dancers emphasized the film’s fiction, and perhaps the fictionality of all narratives.

still from J. Makary's 'Paloma and Raul in San Serriffe'

The protagonist Paloma was played with icy hauteur by Guin Buchan, and the original music by Michael McDermott contributed considerably to the atmosphere.  Paloma and Raul in San Serriffe was shot on 16mm film.  Makary has been working at the intersection of dance and film since 2006 when her first film was shown at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC.

still from 'Paloma and Raul in San Serriffe'

Post-Revolutionary Selections from the Powel House Moving Image Archive, 1888-2089, by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib consists of four videos sited throughout the rooms of the Powell House. The title of the suite implies a non-existent archive and the four selections take place variously in the past and future. They emphasize the house’s changing history and fortunes, from an18th century home of Philadelphia’s mayor who entertained George Washington to a 20th century warehouse, and hence the fact that history always includes change. They also manage to re-insert some of the dirt, disorder and even stench that is ever part of life, but notably eliminated in historic house museum’s versions of history.

still from Hironaka and Suib's 'Powel House Garden Scene'

Powel House Garden Scene, its title a variation on the oldest surviving film, Louis Le Prince’s Roundhay Garden Scene (1888 and hence the date of Hironaka and Suib’s title), is set in an unspecified future when nature has taken over the current rooms. As if in the Biblical dust-to-dust the plaster crumbles and vines grow through the house, all shown as in a slow-motion nature film.  From flora to fauna, A Pigeon’s History of America is the delightful fantasy of the house as a pigeon roost, adorned with their increasing droppings. The notes on the work carry the reassurance that no animals were harmed nor damage done to actual historic property; for this meditation on historical fictions we are reassured that these are, indeed, visual fictions.

still from Hironaka and Suib's 'A Pigeon’s History of America'

Minuet (Room On Room Action) is sited in the ballroom and was inspired by the room’s in-authenticity. The original interior was moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art before the house functioned as an historic site, so what visitors to the house see is a re-creation.  The video switches between original and copy then turns into an ecstatic whirl in which all reality is blurred and finally disappears. Hippy Party is another sly use of modern video illusion: actual clips of 1960s radicals talking about revolution appear to be taking place in the Powell House where 18th-century revolutionaries may well have had actual conversations.  We’ve forgotten that those 18th century Americans may well have sounded like this to the British. Gerry Rubin is certainly wearing authentic, period tie-die; if he’s lucky, he saved it.

Post-Revolutionary Selections is on view through May 9, and on Saturday, May 8th at 2pm poets Thomas Devaney and Sparrow will present a performance piece, Tom Paine’s Pigeons, which promises to address the ongoing rhetoric of revolution in America.

All the artists’ projects are under the umbrella of Landmarks Contemporary Projects, directed and curated by Robert Wuilfe.

Italy to Cyprus by way of L.A.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, The Soft Epic, video still. click to see it bigger.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib go global this summer. (See a clip of their video Soft Epic on their Soft Epic website, a piece so epic it gets a site of its own!) See their works  here:

Pesaro, Italy, June 13th-28th
Moscow, June 22nd and 23rd

Los Angeles, July 11th-mid August

New York, NY, July 28th,

and Nicosia, Cyprus, Sept. 3

Boston

Alex Da Corte, Serge and Bacchus

Look for Philly alum Alex Da Corte’s Casual Luxury ultra-exhibit in New England! Now there’s a culture confrontation!
LaMontagne Gallery
June 18th to July 31st

Greensboro, NC.

Eileen Neff, photo from her show at Weatherspoon Museum

Eileen Neff is showing selected work from the last 10 years in her museum exhibit Eileen Neff: Photographs!  Are they real or are they art? Greensboro, check it out!
Weatherspoon Museum of Art
May 24,  2009  – August 16,  2009

Harrisburg

Sarah Gamble, painting that's in the Art of the State exhibit in Harrisburg

Mind-boggling: 157 works of art by 798 Pennsylvania artists, selected for more than 2,000 entries.

A shout-out to Matt Pruden for this breaking news about the Art of the State.
Here’s a selection of artists we’ve written about from some of the 66 artists from the Philadelphia area.
Arden Bendler Browning
Nanette Acker Clark
Dominic Episcopo
Sarah Gamble
Ed Bing Lee
Lisa Murch
Matthew Pruden
Kate Stewart
Ben Volta
Kip Deeds
Csilla Sadloch

Art of the State, June 27 – September 20
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

New York, NY

Adam Parker Smith, untitled plane crash

Adam Parker Smith  in A Greek Play with a Main Character Named Oblivious (Parker Smith is a Philly alum).

Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

June 23 – July 31, 2009
Opening Reception: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 6 – 9 PM

Jesse A. Greenberg, Invitation Station Arch 1, 2008, Plastic, foam, rubber, silicon, plexi-glass, acrylic, vinyl, mylar, fabric, glitter, urethane, wood, electric lighting 96” x 80” x 28” (243,8 x 203,2 x 71,1 cm)

Jesse A Greenberg will be going to Columbia for grad school this fall, but we still claim him as a Philly guy. He will be in
Wild Feature, a group show with Melissa Brown, Brendan Cass, James B. Franklin, John Hodany, Misaki Kawai and Taylor McKimens.
Zurcher Studio
June 25 – July 26, 2009
Opening Thursday June 25, from 6 to 8 pm

Austin, TX

Amir Lyles

Amir M. Lyles, Africa Create Us:  Art Exhibit and Gallery Talk
DiverseArts’ New East Arts Gallery and Pro Arts Collective
June 13-July 9

This from Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironaka:

If you’re in LA or NYC in the next week, we hope you’ll be able to check out our most recent projects–The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West, and Black Hole.

The Soft Epic opens at Telic Arts Exchange in LA’s Chinatown this coming Saturday, July 26th, and runs through late August. Helen Cahng has organized the exhibition and related public programs at the gallery scheduled during the course of the show.

Black Hole will be shown as part of a one-night screening curated by Christopher Lew (PS1) and others at Artists Space in NYC next Wednesday, July 30th at 6 and 7pm. Because the work is being presented as part of a video program, it won’t be shown here in its installation format. Nadia and I will be in Japan on the screening date, so we won’t see you there, but hope you can make it regardless.

Here are links to a couple of posts on Soft Epic: Roberta’s post and Andrea’s post.
Here’s a link to a post on Black Hole.

I caught Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib‘s Soft Epic video projection at the Icebox on the last day of its run and want to add my appreciation here to what Andrea wrote previously.

Deep into a seemingly endless war and at a time of severe ecological peril, The Soft Epic rides both those waves of anxiety and yet, with its sweep of imagery and magical sound, the work has beauty as well.

There’s lots of anxiety in art at the moment; we are living in dark times and it shows. Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib have occupied the entire Icebox space at the Crane Building with The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West, a 120 foot long video projection with a soundtrack by Bird Snow. It depicts the site of an unspecified disaster set in a modern city, locale unidentified. A street sign bears the common names of Hill and 8th while palm trees at left suggest this might be L.A. – perhaps a reference to Hollywood, whose products the artists acknowledge as a source of their imagery (they specifically mention historical panoramas, sci-fi and disaster films and the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch). At the right is a small farm scene with planted crops and animals, perhaps a vestige of an Edenic past.

The buildings are aflame or in ruins and the city is peopled with wild beasts and various hybrids of human bodies with animal heads. Cat-man in a greatcoat and 18th-century military dress stands in the foreground staring fixedly at the viewer while two cheetahs couple in the mid-ground. Owl-man wears 20th-century military garb and Donkey-man makes occasional appearances in a suit. The sound-track records the ongoing destruction with breaking glass and the noises of falling debris.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West (2008) detail

Large works of art are hard to pull off, and Hironaka and Suib have succeeded in thrusting the viewer into an uncomfortable but utterly compelling, full-scale nightmare. My only doubts are the plethora of birds (including the humming-bird which also appears in Black Hole, their video currently on view at Vox Populi); they seem a conventional image of nature and freedom within a work that is otherwise more original. The Soft Epic reminds me of nothing so much as a little-remembered 1969 film by Richard Lester, The Bed-Sitting Room, set in the post-apocalyptic ruins of London. Sadly, some of the streets not far from the Crane building look like sites of such destruction.

There will be a closing reception for the installation on Thursday, April 10, from 6-9 pm, with performances by Bardo Pond and Spiral Q Puppet Theater.

Installation of These Ghosts That Haunt Us by Tyler Kline and Mike McGovern at Little Berlin

A few blocks north, at Little Berlin is another version of contemporary angst: These Ghosts That Haunt Us; A Psychological Excavation by Tyler Kline and Mike McGovern. The artists collaborated on a number of small works which they call exquisite corpses, although it turns out that one of them completed work begun by the other but with a clear view of the beginnings; perhaps they should just be called collaborations. The exhibition also has work by each artist within an overall installation by Kline which includes aluminum sculptural components and a painted, web-like design enmeshing the walls.

Mike McGovern Memorial to Maureen Patricia Age 19 silkscreen and mixed media. The image is an inverted view of the bridge from which the artist’s sister Maureen fell to her death.

McGovern is a master print-maker: two walls are covered with grids made from a suite of images (prints that use the same plate, block or screen, but with varied inking and colors); the colors and textures are so lush that they resemble pastels, but in fact are screen prints with mixed media. The seductive technique belies their sombre subject-matter: one is of a graffitied, urban dumpster, the other the site of a suicide.

Installation of These Ghosts That Haunt Us with Kline’s collage, The Road to El Dorado, a portrait of Edgar Allen Poe.

Tyler Kline is showing a number of collages on vinyl (old 78s, in fact) as well as a stunning, large portrait of Edgar Allen Poe and two multi-part metal floor-pieces of organic forms that I can only describe as turd-like. The entire installation is full of energy; so perhaps some of their ghosts are benign.

Tyler Kline Untitled cast iron and Untitled cast iron and cast bronze. Watch where you step.

Still from jd Yardsale’s the third idea

Nick Cassway, aka dj Yardsale showed his single-channel video the third idea at International House last month courtesy of InLiquid.com, although it’s still accessible on his web-site. The piece is a sort of video karaoke: Cassway pairs popular songs with public-domain videos found on archive.org (everything from Popeye and home-movies to commercial and instructional films); he calls it a mash-up, hence his dj moniker. Enough of the films are culled from the 1950s that I can’t help but feel the Cold War behind them. The project has the humor of its dissonance and the rudimentary quality of much of the visual material. A cheap shot, perhaps, but who says humor needs original subjects? Cassway is interested in the project as a sort of recycling (or perhaps film garbage studies), and pointedly lets viewers know that his mash-ups are also in the public domain, hence available for the taking. Care for a video dumpster-dive?

Black Hole, a video by Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironaka; I had to play with the image to show anything other than a pure black rectangle, so I’m afraid it’s a bit misleading.

The first ever collaboration between married video-makers Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironaka is a noteworthy event. (Their second collaboration is about to open Wednesday at the Ice Box at the Crane Building; this may be the only space in town big enough to house the installation’s 100-foot-long projection).

These two artists, both Vox members, are in love with the movies and each of them creates work that references the big screen. This collaboration, Black Hole, is a 7 1/2-minute noir surround-sound experience inspired by cinematic takes on imprisonment. The black box has never been blacker. The hole to the sky has never been less promising, the symbolic bird has never looked less free. The soundtrack of clanging gates and such is courtesy of Eugene Lew, Boris (Japan) and Birchville Cat Motel (New Zealand). The piece will remain up through April.

Visual deprivation was more than just the concept here. It was the actual experience. As I blinked my eyes in the penumbral room, I found myself yearning for more images, more action, just more.

I couldn’t wait to break out. This literal experience was quite successful, but being me, I’d rather skip the solitary and imagine myself in someone else’s shoes.

And that’s what the other new video installations at Vox gave me.

Roxana Perez-Mendez, in her two-channel video installation Larga Distancia, Memoria Corta

Vox member Roxana Perez-Mendez both curated the guest artist in the Video Lounge and projected her own work in one of the gallery spaces.

Her Larga Distancia, Memoria Corta is a larger-than-life projection of the two videos Roxana had made for her installation at the Powel House, where they were shown on small screens encased in a pair of Federal pillars installed in the historic house-museum (my post here and Roberta’s post here.

Roxana Perez-Mendez, in her two-channel video installation Larga Distancia, Memoria Corta

What a difference scale can make. Although I enjoyed the videos in their original form, I was crazy about them blown up large. The physical presence of the character that the artist plays takes on a magical quality. In her white dress as she rushes up and down the stairs, she becomes a ghost. And in the ballroom where she dances, she becomes a woman dreaming. On the bed, she turns the historical character into a living, breathing, sexy woman–Elizabeth Powel re-imagined as Perez-Mendez herself, who is searching for her own place as a Puerto Rican in the tales we tell about American history.

The light in this pair of videos comes in through the Powel House windows, casting an aura that is indirect and atmospheric and real all at once. If you missed these videos at the Powel House, catch them here. Even if you saw them there, catch them here.

Perez-Mendez, who was also thinking about what happens to history as conquerors erase the losing side of the story, selected Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga for the Video Lounge. Born of immigrant parents from Nicaragua, he, like Peres-Mendez, mixes installation and video and his own history.

Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, Transmitting Ideology, 20 carved wooden guns equipped with radios.

In his installation Transmitting Ideology, 20 carved wooden guns broadcast political speeches. I asked Miranda Zúñiga about the broadcasts, because most of them had run out of juice by time I got to the exhibit. He wrote:

The radio guns were broadcasting political speeches that I believe have been instrumental in constructing “Conservative” and “Liberal” ideology in the United States. The speeches included in the broadcast are by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan (x2), Martin Luther King (against Vietnam speech, this was the only one I edited by dropping Vietnam and leaving war – the speech fits today’s situation to closely to not drop Vietnam), an excerpt from a debate between Buckley and Chomsky and Obama. Since people can pick up the guns and listen to them, they may be on a different frequency than the transmitter in the gallery, so you may have heard an interview on local radio.

While I heard none of the things Ricardo described, what I heard made perfect sense. I heard a commercial urging us to buy, buy, buy. In the context of Uzis and AK47s, the commercial took on an ominous tone, highlighting the politics of the culture and American consumerism and how they relate to violence. I would have liked to hear some of the political transmissions. Oops. Everything is political. The radio guns, which you can pick up and handle, turned out to be successful, even if they transmitted something the artist hadn’t scripted!

Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, Arbol Torcido (Twisted Tree). Here the superhero on the right tells the other about his sense of dislocation on returning to visit his native land.

Miranda Zuniga’s animated video, Arbol Torcido (Twisted Tree), set in the future, is of conversation between two superheroes, one of whom left his homeland. He tells the other about visiting the family he left behind. As Thomas Wolfe wrote in Look Homeward Angel, you can’t go home again. The video is poignant and painful, the visuals delightful.

You can view it online at http://ambriente.com/carreta_nagua/. It was originally presented as part of a sculptural performance piece in Mexico City.

Part of what I like about both Miranda Zuniga and Perez-Mendez is not just the outsider voice, but the clarity of their concerns as they juxtapose their dual national identities. They are using videos to tell a narrative that’s their own story and at the same time, everyone’s story. We are all trying to figure out how we fit in and where we come from.

Brent Wahl, Interplanetary Death Star

The only non-video was presented by Brent Wahl, who has created a room-size architectural installation Interplanetary Death Star–the skeletal framework, wrapped in aluminum foil, of a sort of stadium/parking lot/spaceship.

I liked the scale and I loved the low-tech material.

Brent Wahl, Interplanetary Death Star, detail

Small, colored square images hung from all over the framework, populating it with laminated photos of people, messages and symbols. It felt like Wahl’s Death Star is channeling all the voices, all the ideas, and carrying them through space–or cyberspace. The aluminum foil reminds me of all the crackpots receiving messages from outer space through their fillings.

I also liked that Wahl gave credit to the crew who wrapped the aluminum foil. Vito Acconci was the first artist I remember who posted the names of his work-crew on his installations. Everyone should be doing this.

Held over from February are the videos by guest artist Jason Schiedel, reinstalled in a different gallery space, and by Deborah Stratman, in Screening, the video space developed within Vox by Hironaka and Suib. I have to add that Stratman’s video and the collaboration by Hironaka and Suib seem to be having a nice chat. I posted on those here.

Best of all is “Cocked,” Matthew Suib’s montage of closeups from classic Westerns. Cutting from squinting gunmen to loaded holsters (and adjacent crotches), it’s a deadpan deconstruction of the showdown.

Sarah McEneaney, looking regal, in a new work at Moore College’s Facts, Fantasies and Fictions.

Narrative art takes a well deserved bow in “Facts, Fantasies and Fictions” at the Galleries at Moore. The paintings by Sarah McEneaney and Christian Curiel, and video art by Matthew Suib, are three stops on a visual merry-go-round where human life is presented against lush landscapes or forlorn atmospheric wastelands.

As with all works focused on people, the big point is that life is precious and regardless of how far we’ve come technologically, we need our stories of people, pets, far-off lands and heroes to engage our minds in headier stuff than today’s grocery list or tomorrow’s bills.

McEneaney’s Independence Day, detail, showing the artist and her dog, Trixie, walking over to a dog that was tied up in the rain. This painting uses the Indian miniature method of story-telling with multiple scenes taking place over time in one work.

Sarah McEneaney’s bright-hued autobiographical paintings in egg tempera on wood, or gouache on paper, keep getting better. Seeing a large group of them together is a reminder of this artist’s special talents as a narrator of whimsy, delicacy and gravitas. McEneaney’s deadpan depictions are a humble, homespun approach. But her visual diary, with its great attention to detail, distills the small moments into Balzac-like vignettes where a pooch is never just a pooch.

Independence Day, detail.

Independence Day, for example, is an urban tableau depicting several actions taking place over time in one compact epic picture. The 4-foot-long work shows fireworks over the artist’s Chinatown North neighborhood. A dog is tied between two prison-like condo buildings and a human figure with another dog approaches the tethered animal. Further on in the same painting, the figure—now with two dogs—is seen running up the street. McEneaney said at the opening that the painting is about her rescue of a dog that had been tied up outside in the rain.

McEneaney and Trixie, having rescued the dog, run back to her house. She
called the SPCA, she said.

Where McEneaney’s tableaux are Bruegel-esque with small figures in a huge land, Christian Curiel—a Puerto-Rican-born New York artist—makes symbolist paintings with jumbo children and adolescents in postapocalyptic landscapes filled with dead or dying animals. The heated atmosphere and ambiguity of Curiel’s works are nice counterpoints to McEneaney’s cool.

Christian Curiel’s large paintings have references to Diego Rivera’s murals and to Frida Kahlo’s use of animals as symbols of psychological states. Note the three-legged horse.

Matthew Suib’s video appropriations of Hollywood movies—some denuded of their players and others focused exclusively on the human face or body—might seem the outlier in this show. But Suib’s works are conceptual narrations and, like Curiel’s and McEneaney’s, fiercely humanist in theme.

Matthew Suib’s Cocked, a montage of close-up shots of faces from Hollywood westerns, takes suspenseful scenes and eviscerates them by extracting the action. These guys squint and scowl ….and next scene they’re smiling! What’s missing, the mayhem, is never missed since the lovingly portrayed faces are gripping in and of themselves.

Cocked and The Desert Loops both subvert martial material by turning it into an elegy about violence and loss of life. Suib’s new video Untitled (Flooded Room), commissioned by Moore and projected on its 20th Street facade, is a rumination on lives lost after Katrina.

Suib, Untitled (Flooded Room) is shown each night from 7-midnight, projected on the Moore Galleries back door.

Narrative art is slippery, and the best of it is subversive, mixing fact and fiction to suggest universal truths. This push for truth is what makes narrative art a rich playground for the mind.

“Facts, Fantasies and Fictions”
Through Dec. 9. Galleries at Moore, 20th St. and the Pkwy. 215.965.4045.