Art Review
Ceramic sculptures carry Contemporary exhibition

By Amaury Saint-Gilles
Special to The Advertiser

Doug Young, "Hawai'i Theatre," 1998 watercolor, one of several images in a variety of media of local buildings and landmarks. Doug Young • Special to The Advertiser

Stephen Freedman, "The Bridge," is a group of 13 identical stoneware vessels assembled as an arch linking science and art. Patty Millington • Special to The Advertiser At The Contemporary Museum Recent Works by Pia Stern Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: Recent Works by Stephen Freedman Hawai'i: Old and New The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center Extended through Sept. 11 526-1322

With three decades of critiquing behind me, I feel confident in saying that the label "mediocre" best fits the majority of the collection, but it is for the exceptions that one should venture to view the show before it closes Sept. 12.

The main lobby is given over to the work of Pia Stern, work that does little to encourage a causal viewer to look further. Stern's canvases are primal vagaries that fail to seduce the eye or mind. Her prestigious background (UC Berkeley, LaJolla and Aix-en-Provence; a bachelor's and two master's degrees) could have served as a catalyst, but the artist here seems to be painting beyond her expertise ... and she fails abysmally at getting her message(s) across two-dimensionally.

Luckily, the second part of this collection holds the view with a superb array of ceramic sculpture. The head of the stairwell is well appointed with work by Stephen Freedman, who deftly revisits earlier pieces from a prolific Los Angeles career in ceramic sculpting.

Freedman chose this showcase opportunity to renew/redo idea(ls) from past productive periods.

Having seen his portfolio, the comparisons one can make between past and present are entirely favorable. Images from yesterday have been revitalized through artistic interpretation as well as connected to each other via form and format.

The straightforward vessels of "Our Father's Answers" are typically basic units, while the undulating group in "The Pongid/Homid Transition" are less about being vessels than acting as a surface for the message written thereon.

Freedman's stacked assemblage of bisque pots entitled "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow" certainly presage the entirely altered forms of "Imprints I-V" with their slash exposed surfaces (interior as well as exterior) and the subtle way in which dozens of perfectly thrown small pots are piecemealed into the larger forms.

His original, imaginative and unusual handling of glaze pushes the viewer to see past the thrown primary vessel forms.

Freedman's introductory essay gives the viewer new criteria for judging these five works: "They carry a memory of the perfect vessel which once came into being through the linear process of well-throwing (thus throwing rings and symmetrical profile).

Environmental stressors (the process of squeezing and beating the vessel) alter the elemental forms within their own volume. Next, the alterations violate the vessel's structure (piercings, etc.). Through the addition of thick slip (thinned potter's clay), these scars become the basis of new adaptive structural elements from which a new logic and new form arise. There is a paradigm which says: Genes mutate, individuals adopt, populations evolve. This is a model of hierarchical transformation in time."

Premier among the pieces in this second-floor installation is "Bridge," a group of 13 identical vessels assembled as a perfect keystoned arch.

Pierced text from one of Freedman's recent essays is written horizontally through the assembled sections, the theme being the common evolutionary basis for science and art.

If the viewer were to stop here, progressing no further, little would be lost. The final sector, "Hawai'i Old and New," images of Hawai'i's buildings and landmarks in a variety of media, is composed of works by a gaggle of artists whose only bond seems to be in the mind's eye of the curator Allison Wong.

Of the nine pieces chosen for display, just two are of visual interest:

• Margaret Ezekiel, a resident of Kaua'i since the 1970s, is very accomplished in her night scenes. Both of her pastels, done on dark paper, achieve luminous effect that remind one of Edward Hopper paintings.
• The brightly sunlit scenes of Doug Young are the equal opposites of Ezekiel's work. His use of light and shadow is what makes each of his combination works being mixes of watercolor, digital and giclee printing with the occasional touch of colored pencil, works that are both memorable and desirable.

The Contemporary Museum could have done much better had the overall mix of works here been screened more precisely. It will be interesting to see their next offering to determine if a trend is in the making.

Amaury Saint-Gilles is an art critic, writer and dealer in fine art on the Big Island. Advertiser art critic Virginia Wageman is on a brief medical leave; Saint-Gilles is among writers filling in during her absence.