| reviews & features | galleries | art museums | schools & universities | other museums | hot links |

All art is local

DeCordova features a unique grouping of regional talent

by Leon Nigrosh

10 ARTISTS/10 VISIONS: 1997 at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln, through September 1.

For the past nine years the DeCordova Museum has taken the bull by the horns and mounted an annual summer exhibition "to emphasize the quality and diversity of the New England art scene, rather than focusing on one unifying theme." A show such as this could be problematic. Happily for us, the curators have managed to avoid complete chaos and instead have garnered an eclectic crew of vital artists with varied interests. Because the works are arranged as small, independent one-person shows, one has the opportunity to study and appreciate the efforts of each artist, thus avoiding the unfortunate carnival atmosphere usually attendant with many group shows.

The most striking works are a group of black bordered rectangles, bursting with bright bands of primary color produced by Bonnie Porter. These large minimalist compositions are intriguing because they are not paintings but Cibachrome photographs. Harking back to Kasimir Malevich's suprematist canvases of the early 1900s, with homage paid to Albers and Kenneth Noland, Porter explores the effects of pure light and color.

Porter's eight foot tall Nerve I consists of dozens of red and yellow bars, while its companion, Nerve II, is made up of stripes of red and blue. The colors are so intense their interlocking arrangement produces an illusion of the intervening blackness becoming filled with their respective secondary colors, orange and purple. By manipulating her film stock with a secretive technique, she has created other works like the three foot by seven foot Either/Or, with its three red and three blue vertical strips that fade to black. They not only excite the eye but calm the mind.

Debra Olin examines her Jewish heritage through monoprints and three-dimensional printed garment constructions. Her monotype muslin construction Is She Jewish? embodies many of the fears and memories most young Jewish women face. Small pouches are adorned with Yiddish words shickseh, schwarzeh, goy -- gentile girl, black, non-Jew. We are left to ponder whether these words each ask a question or state a fact.

Creating another mood, Olin's large monoprint Hands for an Angel contains scenes of family joy around the Sabbath table. In The Hand of God, we see an array of hands holding goblets, wrapping tefillin, or praying. It is interesting to note that the dye Olin uses is natural beet juice. Could this be another reference to her Old World Jewishness -- borscht?

As personal as Olin's work may be, Worcester artist Howard Johnson's drawings are downright introverted. Arcane symbolism competes with swastikas, Christianity, Joe Stalin, breasts, UFOs, and cartoon figures, raging on page after page of recycled architectural drawings. Executed in pencil and bandages, Johnson's opaque illustrations attract and repel. By juxtaposing sacred and profane images in imaginatively manic scrawls, he invites us into the world of his intricately eccentric mind, if we can just get through the dense underbrush.

If "wacky" can be used to describe artistic merit, then Alejandro Berlin's kinetic sculptures are its embodiment. For sheer fun and lots of laughs, just step in front of Artificial Spring and watch scores of tiny pink balloons inflate and deflate like a pair of healthy lungs. Watch an oversized strawberry pulsate and thump with its own audio heartbeat. Press a button and watch a large, lascivious pink charmeuse tongue slowly curl out and upward from the wall to lick at your private parts. What does this have to do with art? Well, in the recorded words of Berlin's wall sculpture Art Talk, with its little waggling pink tongue, "Blah blah blah, blah blah blah . . . "

The DeCordova Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call (617) 259-8355.