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PULP > May 22, 2003 > Arts > Art Review The Female Form DUOS: COLLABORATIONS WITH
By Alice Winn Throughout civilization, people have argued about the right way to present the female body. Questions are constantly raised over whether the feminine form, as represented in art, literature or the media, was too fat, too thin, too real, too ideal, too commercial or too sexist. The roots of this preoccupation can be traced back to the origins of our species, with the earliest images of the human figure being Paleolithic fertility goddesses. The depiction of woman, explored across centuries and cultures in a multitude of incarnations, as beautiful, erotic, glorified, anatomic, distorted, mysterious, remains volatile and ever-changing in the hands of regional artists. Sharon "Mama" Spell attempted to change her sense of boundaries, her definitions of who and what she was. Posing as woman as perfect vessel, receptive to whatever one cared to project upon her, the artist/musician/comedian made line drawings of her nude form, then invited nine artist friends to elaborate upon them in a style and media of their choice. Rising to this edgy, exhilarating challenge, this group brings originality, humor and poetic depth to their subject. Spell's very real body grew in the imagination of herself and her friends until it was transfigured. Spell originally worked in an ideal world -- a blank page, literally, in which she defined herself as opposed to a world that defines her. Much as cartoonists will, she reinvented herself as a signature character. And the artists took exquisite pains and pleasure with her body. The pictures embrace subjective differences, presenting variations on their theme that take viewers just beyond the edge of conventional meaning. Full of presence and intimate effects, they move back and forth between abstract and figurative approaches. Zoe Wolverine produced cinematic magnifications of Spell. A sublime sensation of weight defines her painterly, larger-than-life torso. Juicy colors and fiery light mix within layers of decoration that seem to embody the play of consciousness, revealing Wolverine's personally complex joy in the natural body. Mara Hincher's abstractions employ metallic bits of flattened Coke cans to suggest subtle fleshiness, shiny and conceptual. In Molly Kiely's double take on Spell -- one persona lonely and longing, the other vital and voluptuous -- sexuality is seen as a dark, deep, intractable force. Jeff Schreckengost envisions Spell's ample curves as rolling landforms, expressing his feeling that the body is this nurturing abundance. In shadowy watercolor paintings by Ann Marie Tisdale, Spell appears the imprisoned inhabitant of a dream, who has become the unwitting object of voyeurism. As viewers, we seem to be spying upon an utterly unsuspecting life, bathed in an otherworldly aura of romantic possibility. Muddied light slatted through blinds bars her breasts, illuminating her vulnerable beauty, letting us watch her as she might wish to be watched. Across town at ModernFormations Gallery, Stacy Hoffman portrays women through a snapshot aesthetic, using seemingly haphazard composition to carefully build the feeling that she is trying to communicate. In a black-and-white photograph taken at a Pittsburgh parade, Hoffman has spotlighted a solitary figure as she emerged onto a street. Her fragmented form appears toward the edges of the frame, as if seen from the corner of the eye. This figure presents an individual glint, a momentary presence emerging through the surrounding vagueness of her setting, imbuing her with reality and strength. In drawings and installations, Alexandra Etschmaier uses the female form to convey not just the curves and sculptural aspect of the body but also the spiritual qualities. Her works on exhibit at the Slaughterhouse Gallery express the body's capability of yielding both the most delicate dream and the harshest reality. Her pen marks on paper or wood sometimes become furiously beautiful scribbles suggesting a visual and tactile talisman of feminine energy. Other times, her lines are sparer, suggesting female figures, but distilled to an essence. The works become shadowy reflections of her emotional life, symbolized through fragments of recognizable forms -- a lightly traced turn of the thigh, a thrown-back head, a pregnant bulge. She deliberately compresses them into obviously inadequate confines, sometimes caging them within broken wooden crates. The contrast between her elegant touch upon simple, rough-hewn materials often conveys a sense of melancholy, of the trials and aspirations of the spirit struggling with its fleshy condition. A coarsely carved wooden figure locked in thought seems compressed like a spring that must someday erupt. Draped with a long train of heavy, crocheted jute twine, her body seems a kind of intimate battlefield made ragged by passions both inside and outside of herself. Alexandra Etschmaier's show has a closing reception on Friday, May 30. 6 p.m. |
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