meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

"GHOSTS OF THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: ZUGUNRUHE"
AN INSTALLATION BY RACHEL BERWICK

David Winton Bell Gallery
List Art Center
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
November 14, 2009 - February 14, 2010

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by Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)

Article excerpt:

As the first decade of the century rounds to the nearest ten, world leaders negotiate climate change in Copenhagen, an orphaned iceberg closes in on Australia's Southern coast, and the long shadow of winter settles over the Northern Hemisphere, chasing flocks of birds on their annual migrations south.

Throughout these winter months, artist Rachel Berwick casts our collective gaze back to migrations and mass extinctions of centuries past with “Zugunruhe,” an installation and lecture series at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

The curious term “zugunruhe” found life in the 1950s, when ornithologist Gustav Kramer took it upon himself to name the documented behavior of nighttime restlessness in birds just prior to migration.

John James Audubon’s 19th century accounts of the American passenger pigeons’ massive migrations cite “the light of the noonday was obscured as by an eclipse” as the birds passed overhead. In recent enough generational memory to sting, the equally dramatic extinction of what was once the most abundant bird in North America takes the spotlight in Berwick’s installation. It was 100 years ago that Martha, the last of the passenger pigeons, became
the bearer of her grim title. She survived five lonely, terminal years in captivity before her species’ official extinction in 1914.

The entryway to “Zugunruhe” displays a rare copy of Audubon’s 1840 book “Birds of America” alongside literary accounts of this vanished migration, set in subtle wall texts. Perched on a central pedestal, a blown glass sphere holds a brass pointer, which rotates like a compass between the texts as if by magic or magnetism. According to Berwick, the pointer follows a “hypothetical migration.” In the confines of this particular time and space, her device must point to historical accounts in lieu of the real thing. It’s easy to get caught up in the novelty of Berwick’s nostalgic device, which engages passing gallery goers with an almost alchemic curiosity as it chases this grim mythology.

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Image: Rachel Berwick, Zugunruhe, 2009, cast copal (amber), wood, two-way architectural mirror, moss, metal, polyester resin.

INNER CITY:

AN INSTALLATION BY CERAMIC SCULPTOR ARNIE ZIMMERMAN AND ARCHITECT TIEGO MONTEPEGADO

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
Providence, R.I.
through January 3, 2010

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by Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)

Article Excerpt:

AT THE HEART OF RISD’S CANAL-SIDE CAMPUS, AN OLD TROLLEY TUNNEL LINKS THE GROUND LEVEL OF COLLEGE HILL TO ITS LOFTY HEIGHTS. BARNACLE-LIKE CERAMIC GROWTHS FESTOON THE TILE SHELTER OF THIS PUBLIC TRANSIT NEXUS, WHICH HUDDLES IN STARK CONTRAST TO THE CLEAN LINES OF ITS YOUNG NEIGHBOR, THE CHACE CENTER.

Inaugurated in Fall 2008, the Center houses an expansion of the RISD Museum, linked by a glass sky bridge to the Decorative Arts galleries of Pendleton House, built in 1906.

Arriving by escalator at the museum’s third level main gallery with this stratified urbanity on my mind, I am confronted with a grid marked in white tape on the polished concrete floor. Rising from the grid are three squat pedestals, each bearing a place identity: Lisbon (Portugal), Leeuwarden (the Netherlands) and Providence. “Inner City,” a modular installation that has grown to include over 180 ceramic buildings and figurines by sculptor Arnie Zimmerman, has visited all three of these cities. In each exhibition venue, the installation has occupied a distinct footprint, thanks to Zimmerman’s collaborator, architect Tiago Montepegado. The installation at the RISD Museum represents the work’s largest iteration to date.

The white tape continues into the 4,000 square foot inner sanctum, demarcating a tidy, right-angled street grid punctuated by 26 pedestals of varied height.

Large, stoneware edifices, more suggestive of factories than dwellings, rise from these blocks, their fractured walls bearing the telltale signs of kiln accident or earthquake. It’s an ironic urban plan to find here in New England, where urban arteries skin old cow paths to double back on oneway streets and endless, orange-coned roadway improvement projects.

Crawling and perched throughout Zimmerman’s ruinous vignettes, grim-faced clay figurines, seemingly without race, gender or age, labor in rough-hewn detail. Their uniforms are generic — some wear bright sweaters, marked with shiny glaze “X” suspenders, suggesting secondhand and ill-fitted clothing. In Zimmerman’s city, there is no cult of style. Sweatshirts, hats and harlequin patterns echo Goodwill bins.

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Image: Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado. Installation views and details from “Inner City,” RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI, 2009. ©Arnie Zimmerman, courtesy of Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Providence, Rhode Island. Photography by Erik Gould.

PLUG IN, PROVIDENCE
PIXILERATIONS [V.6]: THE GREAT DISRUPTION

RISD's Sol Koffler Gallery, 5 Traverse Gallery,
and venues throughout Providence
September 24 - October 11, 2009
Providence, RI

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by Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)

Article excerpt:

As part of FirstWorks' annual performing arts festival, the Pixilerations new media showcase has evolved into an anticipated Providence gateway to the "wired and weird". An outlet for new media art across a dizzying list of disciplines (including sound, video, performance, and installation), Pixilerations intrigued me when I made my move from Boston to Providence two years ago, and was something of a deal-clincher when I joined the FirstWorks staff in late 2008.

Fast-forward to present, as we wade bravely in to make Pixilerations [v.6] a reality (with the help of our partners at Brown and RISD, and hard-won NEA funding.) Apparently, it's my job to make Pixilerations legible for the general public. Truth? Even for a halfway insider like me, this is no small task.

Comprised of new media curators, artists, and educators, the Providence-based curatorial team that shifts the pixels in 2009 represents several strata of the Brown and RISD tower to enlightenment. For the first time, this year Pixilerations plugs in with a private gallery partner, 5 Traverse Gallery.

Gallery director Maya Allison serves as exhibition director for this ambitious showcase, which this year includes more than 70 local, regional and international artists.

As the curatorial dust settled, I plugged in with Allison for an insider's tour - a conversation appropriately animated by the submissions database, a colorful spreadsheet, and a pile of pixels.

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Image: Andrew Ames, "Space Invader Returns Home," 2009, mixed media and custom electronics.

CW Roelle
"Not Only Women In White Dresses"

AS220 Project Space
July 8 - 27, 2009
Providence, Rhode Island

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By Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)

Article Excerpt:

Arguably one of the most prolific and talented draftsmen in Providence, CW Roelle sports a callus in the center of his palm the size of a quarter. With a fluid facility for depicting everyday objects and structures through a patient, continuous line, Roelle deftly interweaves the mundane with invented characters and complex environments using only dark annealed steel wire and a pair of sturdy pliers. The callus is a hazard of the trade.

"I was doing a lot of pencil line drawings, and I wanted to reach in, grab that line and just bend it with my hands – I figured the best way to bend line with my hands was with wire."

Roelle draws in space, forgoing paper and pencil for a system of twists, hooks and the occasional change of gauge to achieve dazzling effects of depth and shade. Defending the claim that he is "not a sculptor," Roelle realizes his work wherever possible without the solid crutch of welding, with the exception of the most structurally spare foundations required to support his larger scale pieces.

Never referencing sketches, Roelle turns to photographs and live models as his primary source materials, combining elements from several origins to create one figure. The pleats and folds of clothing, interior environments complete with décor, and embellished frames to contain each composition are delicately rendered. Facial expressions in his figurative work remain ambiguous.

"Wire dulls expression," explains Roelle, whose go-to inspiration book is a well-thumbed vintage volume titled "A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen." In addition to the rich period costumes and interiors of silent film, Roelle appreciates that facial expressions "are so much better…so much sharper" in the still frames documenting this groundbreaking medium.

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Image: CW Roelle, "How To Read The Paper", 2009, 22" x 36" x 3", painted steel wire.

(Author's Note: The show's title was changed after the writing of this article to "Not Just Women In White Dresses," a play on art market insiders' knowledge of "what sells").

PAUL CLANCY
CITY UNCONVENTIONAL: Providence’s photo-archeologist continues his search for the soul of a building.

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By Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)

Article Excerpt:

When I first arrived in “Downcity” Providence one Saturday in July, 2007, Paul Clancy was the first person that I encountered. I remember this clearly, because the sunlit movie set of this hauntingly beautiful, yet so often underserved urban streetscape was utterly deserted.

With the art-deco “Superman Building” towering overhead, there was something disquietingly post-apocalyptic about the summer scene. I ducked into the then brand new AS220 Project Space to reorient myself. On display in the group show “Describing the Dreyfus,” were Paul Clancy’s haunting photomontages: a highly interpretive archive documenting the renovation of the Dreyfus Hotel, now housing, among other things, artists’ studios, the Local 121 restaurant and the gallery I was taking refuge in. Manning the space was the soft-spoken artist himself, interpretive archivist to the past and future of Providence’s skyline.

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Image: Paul Clancy, "Dreyfus Lathing Altar No 1", 2006, UltraChrome archival print (from film), diptych.