BILL VAN SICLEN: HISTORICAL REALITY AT URI, ABSTRACT ART AT RIC
Providence Journal
April 6 2010
RI
In many ways, it’s hard to imagine two more disparate exhibits than
the ones currently on view at URI’s downtown Providence campus and
the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College.
The URI show, "The Armenian Genocide: 95 Years Later, A Remembrance,"
explores one of the darkest chapters in 20th-century history: the
systematic expulsion and murder of more than 1.5 million Armenians
by Ottoman Turkish forces between 1915 and 1922. Organized by Berge
Zobian, an Armenian-American photographer and the owner of Gallery Z
on Federal Hill, the show combines archival materials such as period
posters and photographs with original artworks.
The result is a hybrid show — part memorial, part history lesson and
part art exhibit — that commemorates what many scholars believe is
the first modern example of state-sponsored genocide.
The RIC show, meanwhile, is a fairly traditional group exhibit. Titled
"Abstraction in Providence" and organized by RIC gallery coordinator
James Montford, it features the work of five local artists — Mahler
Ryder, Ruth Dealy, Irene Lawrence, Lloyd Martin and Donna Bruton —
all of whom embrace abstraction to greater (Lawrence, Martin) or lesser
(Dealy, Bruton) degrees.
Despite their differences, however, the two shows have at least one
thing in common: both illustrate how good intentions can be undermined
(or at least muffled) by curatorial missteps.
Fortunately, that’s less of a problem at RIC than it is at URI.
Though "Abstraction in Providence" never really gets around to
addressing the question implied by its title — to wit, is there
something unique or exceptional about abstract art in Providence? —
the quality of the art generally makes up for the show’s thematic
shortcomings.
Martin, for example, may be better known in New York and Los Angeles
than he is in home state, where he typically keeps a low profile.
Nevertheless, this Pawtucket-based painter is worth watching, both
for his refined color sense and his muscular, hands-on approach to
geometric abstraction.
Both qualities can be found in "Current," a mural-sized work in which
long bands of white paint alternate with bursts of rainbow-hued color.
The result suggests a classic New England church — all prim white
clapboards and smoldering stained glass windows — as reinterpreted
by the great Dutch modernist Piet Mondrian.
While Martin’s paintings have an architectural heft and solidity,
those of Providence painter Irene Lawrence conjure up an array of
more evanescent effects. The smudgy gray and black brushstrokes of
"Eros Negri/2" suggest a nighttime view of water, while the more
symmetrical yellow-gray marks that dominate "Motives for Writing
V" evoke a similarly watery scene during the day. (In both cases,
Lawrence seems to be channeling the spirit of one of the great artistic
beachcombers of all time: Claude Monet.)
Dealy, of course, is well known in Ocean State art circles, both for
her powerful series of self-portraits and for her well-publicized
struggles against uveitis, a severe eye disease. The two large
portraits on display here are typical of her work, in which raw
emotions and clashing colors eventually give way to a strange kind
of serenity.
It’s also nice to see some of Mahler Ryder’s buoyant mixed media
sculptures, which deftly mix elements of cubist-style collage and
jazz-inspired improvisation. (Ryder, a prominent African-American
artist and a longtime professor at the Rhode Island School of Design,
died in 1992.)
Still, perhaps the show’s biggest surprise is Bruton, an artist who’s
been around for a while (she joined RISD’s painting faculty in 1993)
but whose work hasn’t received much attention or exposure in these
parts.
Partly, that’s Bruton’s own fault. Though paintings like
"Co-Ordination" and "The Healing Source" draw on a wide range of
contemporary sources — everything from children’s drawings and
outsider art to the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s —
the results feel so wonderfully spontaneous that you can easily miss
the sophistication behind them.
The URI show, on the other hand, isn’t so lucky. Though many of the
individual artworks are powerful in themselves, the show’s sprawling
layout and lack of background information make it difficult to place
the materials in a larger historical context. What’s more, the show
combines objects of genuinely historic and artistic value — notably
period photographs of the death marches and murder campaigns carried
out by Ottoman troops and posters celebrating Armenian solidarity —
with other works that border on kitsch.
That’s not to say there aren’t some memorable pieces in the exhibit.
A painting by Tigran Tsitoghdzyan, for example, portrays the Armenian
Genocide as a literal gash in history — a unhealed wound that opens
up to reveal faces, both young and old. A pair of somber paintings by
Kevork Mourad, meanwhile, show bodies buried underneath barren fields.
Ever better is "Screamers," a video documentary directed by the
Armenian-American director Carla Garapedian. Released in 2006,
"Screamers" follows System of a Down, a Los Angeles-based rock band,
as it tries educate audiences about the Armenian Genocide in between
head-banging sets of heavy metal music.
At one point, members of the band visit Washington, D.C., where they
buttonhole politicians who routinely vote against recognizing the
Ottoman slaughter of Armenians as genocide (a move strenuously opposed
by the present-day Turkish government). The resulting clash of history,
heavy metal and American-style political hypocrisy is priceless.
"Abstraction in Providence: Mahler Ryder, Lloyd Martin, Ruth Dealy,
Irene Lawrence, Donna Bruton" runs through April 22 at the Bannister
Gallery, Rhode Island College, 600 Mt. Pleasant Ave., Providence.
Hours: Tues.-Fri. noon-8 or by appointment. Contact: (401) 456-9765
or
"The Armenian Genocide: 95 Years Later, In Remembrance" runs through
April 30 at the URI-Feinstein Campus gallery, 80 Washington St.,
Providence. Hours. Mon.-Thurs. 9-9 and Fri. 9-4. Contact: (401)
277-5206.
For more art listings,
go to projothebeat.com and click on "Visual Arts."
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