Visual art review from The Durham Herald-Sun, May 19, 2004

AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE AT ARTSPACE

"Scott Eagle: Killing Modern"

"Kathy Ammon: in the midst"

"André' Leon Gray: circumventing the pigment"

by Blue Greenberg

The May exhibits at Artspace in Raleigh are not about spring or flowers or fun. They are about art that is at a standstill, mothers and children who are at risk, and racism that constantly needs to be addressed.

Scott Eagle, the artist in the main gallery, is a meticulous painter, with spectacular drawing skills. He uses two images to set the themes for his show. One is a cart full of screaming people facing a horse that has been harnessed backward. The other is a storm funnel that symbolizes a cyclone or tornado. The first represents the exhibit title, "Killing Modern," the other, unquestionably, is the symbol of a world out of control.

In his signature painting, Eagle uses a trompe l'oeil effect to simulate a raised image on stone of a wagon, filled with abstract, shrieking figures, and a scrawny horse harnessed to a wagon in such a way that neither he nor the wagon can move. That image is repeated several more times in the show. One is in the form of a diptych that depicts a landscape filled with collaged images of discarded art, machines, and everyday objects. The other is a charcoal and acrylic drawing. It is in the drawing that we recognize the figures in the cart. They are the anguished victims from one of the great war paintings of all times, Picasso's "Guernica," 1937. For Eagle, the cart represents modernism that is mired in the detritus of civilization and cannot move.

The artist's wind funnels churn up his compositions and symbolize the uncertainty in the world. Cyclone twisters threaten to eat up one composition while its reverse funnel deposits things in another. In his gallery guide, there is no clue to the symbolic use of the twisters, but a painting labeled "Self Portrait," shows a fragile butterfly taking off between two bending twisters. If the butterfly is symbolic of the painter, then his life hangs on a thread between nature's erratic actions. In another diptych, a nude figure points a gun toward its neighboring canvas, where a cyclone rotates in its deadly dance.

The exhibition is a showcase for Eagle's various techniques and in a cartoon-type format, George Washington pulls a $5 bill from the coat of a tall figure that can be none other than Abraham Lincoln. Eagle calls it "A Concise History of American Politics." In "The Life Cycle" a man on a bicycle pedals hard while a skeleton in the back seat weighs him down.

His "Madonna and Fish" is a compressed composition, rendered in the style of medieval manuscripts. Mary sits in front of a stream while in the background tiny figures and artificial trees populate a mound where a blue tree spreads across the width of the panel. The painting seems completely out of context, in technique as well as theme, until you look more closely at the fish, which turns into a wily, scaly figure as it curls up in Mary's lap. Pessimistic, sinister, and surreal; it fits.

Eagle's entire body of work borders on cynicism tinged with a veil of despair.

In the Upfront Gallery Kathy Ammon's swirling maelstroms of color engulf a mother tenderly holding a child. If you walk around the gallery in a clockwise direction inside each painting a mother and child nestle together. The mother kisses the child, and the mother protects the child who is able to play in innocent safety. In the last one, however, which the artist numbered, "one," faces peer out of the swirling colors and the mother and child seem in danger. If you begin your walk counter clockwise, the frightening faces begin the series, but disappear as the series continues. The mother and her child bask in the safety and security of the tangled colors and all is well. The story ends well from one perspective and has a different meaning from the other.

André Leon Gray was the inaugural artist a few years ago in the six-month Regional Emerging Artist-In-Residence Program at Artspace. This month he has returned with a show in the lobby and is still using found objects to make his political statements. Racism is his theme and he moves back and forth through America's past as he works through his ideas.

One assemblage refers to the pseudo-scientific findings about blacks and monkeys. Another refers to black Americans as Army heroes through a figure that sprouts wings and wears a belt of bullets as if they were amulets. One piece refers to our black basketball giants who climb the basketball ladder looking for fame and money while they skip the blackboard of education.

Gray has a keen eye for using ordinary objects to make his point. You cannot pass them without stopping, because his messages are crystal clear.

The art in these exhibitions is neither serene nor comfortable; this is art that makes you think.

Artspace is located at 201 E. Davie St. in Raleigh. For information, call (919) 821-2787.

Blue Greenberg's column appears each week in The Arts. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702.