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Arts #008 Pittsfield Where Baseball Was Born Gallery Boreas Outlines Ambitious Plans Berkshire Arts #007 Mission of Burma Rocks Mass MoCA A Legendary Boston Band on Tour Berkshire Arts #006 The Devil Made Me Do It Summer Movies for the Fun of It Berkshire Arts #005 Nature at the Contemporary Artists Center Updating the Beautiful, Sublime and Picturesque Berkshire Arts #004 Haale at Mass MoCA: Hudson Review Romney Scalps Mohawk and Other News |
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Updating the Beautiful, Sublime and Picturesque Back To Nature Contemporary Artists Center 189 Beaver St. North Adams, MA Through July 23, 2006 By Jane Hudson Berkshire Fine Arts Contributor July 4, 2006 The Contemporary Artists Center is located in the Beaver Mill next to the Hoosac River on Rte. 8 heading toward Clarksburg, MA. Young artists live and work there, some on a permanent basis as well as short term Residencies. In addition, frequent exhibitions of national and international artists are shown in the galleries. As I walked down the hall toward the gallery where ‘Back to Nature’ is installed, there were welcoming sounds of the woods, birds, frogs, bugs and the ubiquitous tumbling water of the river that runs along side the mill complex. Katherine Burns and Colby Lieder have created a soundscape that forecasts the conceptual thrust of the exhibition. It’s the old concern, the balance of nature and culture. The aesthetic of the show is divided along these lines as well where the work is seen sometimes in the framed tradition of painting, photography or collage, and at other times, as earth, grass or taxidermy. Major moments of each stand out: Mark Andreas’ ‘Seed Spreader’ installation of an alien-like robotic sculpture which jerks into a spinning spasm on an accompanying video, and rests on a ground of packed earth that covers the gallery floor. Cayatano Ferrer has placed a large video looped projection of a flowing river directly adjacent to an open window that looks out onto the Hoosic River, a doppelganger effect that’s quite intriguing. Brian Collier’s ‘Teach the Starling’ installation deals with the over-running of North America by the European ‘scheiffelin’, and his attempt to train them. They live on a video and are stuffed in mid-flight, perched about the space of text and maps, reminding one of Hitchcock’s creepy ‘Birds’. On the side of the ‘object’ Henry Klein presents a body of quite convincing paintings of rocks in streams. The paint as well as the imagery is handled lovingly where light and reflectivity compete with the weight of stone. Wendy Davenport’s watercolors are remindful of needlepoint of another era. She uses natural images to create delicate compositions that evoke an almost hieratic esotericism. Brad Farwell exposes the apparatus of the nature photograph as he is seen in his large scale photos holding reflectors toward his rather humble subjects. These artists among others have grappled with the difficulty of referencing nature without becoming cloying. There are some smart ideas, a few jokes, and a general respect for the gift of being in a location that makes no apologies for its place in nature and culture. On Wednesday evenings, the CAC also presents lectures by artists. Recently, Resident Hyunch Sung coordinated a group of video artists in the program to present and discuss their work. In the front gallery, two pieces were striking. Jason Verone projected his video ‘Tactical Information Bomb’ onto the surface of his black/ white abstract painting. The keystoned image of clips from an array of TV sources was filtered as a negative, taking on an eerie darkness. The play of cartoon images against ads and political news was in counterpoint to a kind of linear smearing the artist achieved by shooting moving footage according to a unique formula. His use of digital editing and processing created a rather gestural surface quite at ease with his painting. Hyunch Sung’s installation, ‘Tornado’ was stunning! Shooting video through the panes of glass in the windows of the mill (each shot lasting 24 breaths), she stacks the panes as individual images, creating a ‘whole’ window from these hovering, hand-held parts. The image is subtle, fascinating and quite disturbing as the panes fall away into darkness at the end of each loop. There are also two feather- covered light boxes (one with broken eggs, and the other with a drawing of a female figure hidden within) and a secret box set upon a pile of pillow feathers. These additional elements relate to autobiographical content that, although compelling as motivation, failed to induce this viewer to get down on the floor to peek. The ‘window’ was more than enough. Just outside the door a van was parked. The interior, designed by artist Carolina Ceycado and her husband (their beautiful year-old daughter charmed us all), was paneled with split logs (a gift from a local logger). Along the top of the walls were various drawings, and a video monitor screened videos by Jocko Weyland, Jane MacTeer and Cayetano Ferrer. Most notable among these was Weyland’s super-8 footage of a Chinese skateboarder leaping over a section of the Great Wall! Good times!! -----  Print-friendly View
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