Artists outraged

Grim visions of Holocaust horrors keep history alive

by Leon Nigrosh

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE HOLOCAUST At the ARTSWorcester Gallery at Quinsigamond Community College, 670 West Boylston Street, through April 29.

Each spring, for thousands of years, Jews have recounted their Biblical escape from slavery in Egypt. In this century, they've had to add to their Passover recitation the account of another macabre persecution -- Nazi Germany's systematic destruction of their people during World War 2, the "unspeakable": the Holocaust.

To keep this history alive, ARTSWorcester is currently exhibiting Holocaust-inspired artworks by two area artists at Quinsigamond Community College. Neither painter Stepheny Kotzen Riemer nor her family were direct victims of Nazi atrocities. So while she learned its history as a child, it wasn't until the early '80s, when Riemer took a course in Holocaust studies at Simmons College, that she felt an emotional connection to the six million Jews and the millions of Catholics, Gypsies, gays, lesbians, and other "undesirables" who died under Hitler.

Each of the watercolors in Riemer's four-years-in-the making Holocaust-based trilogy addresses one aspect of the Nazi's mindless hate. In The Warsaw Ghetto, Riemer presents a compressed view of the daily activities of the confined Jews as she imagines they might have happened. We see people engaged in commerce while, over there, hooligans attack a hapless individual, all under the SS banner and the painted slogan "Deutchland Uber Alles." The sharp perspective of Riemer's buildings and the flat, opaque coloring of images drawn with an almost child-like hand create an air of stillness and unreality within the montage.

Her most haunting work, The Trains, shows old men, women, and children crammed into cattle cars moments before they begin their final journey. Dominating the scene are two soldiers wearing steel helmets in the distinctive shape that's come to symbolize all that is evil. An opaque black sky lends a dark atmosphere of foreboding. This work goes well beyond depicting the Nazi's genocidal machinations and represents the inhumanity of all perverted governments toward their perceived "undesirables."

The overwhelming scale of these works transfixes the viewer, but Riemer's tiny four-by-five-inch prints are just as powerful. Her white on black Grip shows an SS bejeweled hand clenching the thin wrist of an obvious unfortunate. Hope also shows only two hands, but in contrast, these hands reach upward in prayer. Both etchings spur deep, and different, emotional responses from visitors.

Roger Preston's first impressions of the Holocaust came from movie-theater newsreels he saw when he was five years old. These grainy black-and-white images of the Allies evacuating the emaciated survivors from Nazi death camps stayed in his mind. As years passed, he often thought of himself as one of the prisoners and tried to imagine how that must have felt. Eventually, through his artistic skills and inborn empathy, he produced a small series of dynamic mixed-media canvases including Behind The Gate. Bold images of bent and broken figures huddled behind star-shaped barbed wire evokes strong emotions about the plight of these people in particular, the lot of all unjustly caged humans, and the apparent indifference of their captors.

Preston carries the theme of indifference to its furthest point in Pieces, in which he sheds a stark light on a tangle of humanity, chopped into a pile of refuse. Complex composition, great depth, a thicket of challenging colors, and visions of distorted limbs combine to provoke physical discomfort in the viewer.

Preston's 17 black-and-white six-by-12-inch computer drawings are less effective. Unfortunately, like the artist, viewers are seduced and distracted by the newness of electronic technology and are more concerned with how the images were produced than with whatever tale they might tell. The lack of three-dimensionality and excessive use of Ben Day dots in prints such as Distress, which shows a bleeding woman with her hair entangled in barbed wire, dilutes the horrific concepts to near cartoon status. Perhaps a different software program might better emulate Preston's consummate painting style.

The ARTSWorcester Gallery at Quinsigamond Community College is open Monday through Friday from 5 to 7 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Call 854-4202 or 755-5142.