Art
Biennial mixes satire, black-on-black, puppetry

By Virginia Wageman
Advertiser Art Critic

The Contemporary Museum's biennial is a potpourri showcasing the work of six superb Hawai'i artists. Included are a playful video; cheerful photographs of grave sites, and others, more conceptual, of soap and body hair; sublime, richly layered drawings that are black all over; an engaging installation; and dark, satirical paintings.

•	5th Biennial of Hawai'i Artists The Contemporary Museum Through Aug. 12 526-1322 (www.tcmhi.org)

Teraoka, the first Hawai'i artist to be in two Contemporary Museum biennials — he was in the first one eight years ago — has always utilized satire as an expressionistic means, but nowhere so strongly or so darkly as in the current body of work.

Three large paintings are exhibited along with over 50 miniatures, little canvases that elaborate on details from the larger works. They all refer to the history of Western art, specifically early Renaissance art, echoing the grotesqueries and spatial devices of Bosch, Bruegel, and Piero di Cosimo, even in format Botticelli, with looming foreground figures set against many-peopled architectural backgrounds.

Little of Teraoka's Asian roots is evidenced in these works, unlike the earlier paintings that evoked the floating world of ukiyo-e. Rather, he has leaped across America to Europe for subject matter and style, the only reminder of his Japanese heritage being that the monumental paintings read from right to left, as does an Oriental scroll.

His themes are based on the fallen Eve and the Spanish Inquisition, but here he comes back to America, applying those events to contemporary ones like the Bill/Monica affair and the court martial of Kelly Flinn (the Air Force lieutenant who had an affair with a married enlisted man). Teraoka's view of America is scathing. His mockery of society's morals, of mass media and of religion is unrelenting.

These works offer no glimmer of redemption, making us feel very uncomfortable indeed. But this is all to the good, for discomfort, not complacency, is the stuff of positive change. Teraoka is a political artist in the best sense, baring the defects of society while giving an ironic bow to convention — framing his little paintings in the gold-leafed ovals of the old masters.

The large canvases and many of the small works were exhibited in New York and San Diego last fall and earlier this year. Others of the small works are exhibited for the first time.

In her biennial selection, Ukaji too reprises works exhibited earlier: exquisite graphite drawings in which she literally layers dense black over black, achieving a rich, shimmering effect like sheets of polished steel.

The work titled "Existence" was shown in 1999 at the East Hawai'i Cultural Center in Hilo, where Ukaji lives. There four panels were shown, each 30 feet long, flowing from the wall down to and across the floor. Unfortunately, the lighting was poor, and the works seemed crowded.

In the larger gallery of the Contemporary Museum, only two panels are exhibited, and this time completely on the floor, elegantly held flat by bars of steel that echo the sheen of the dense graphite. The two panels are plenty to absorb, emphatically demonstrating that less can be more.

Later works exhibited show Ukaji moving beyond the elegant austerity of the "Existence" panels to more expressionistic scribblings in which the artist's hand is more evident. This is especially so in the most recent work, "Inmost," where for the first time not the entire sheet is covered, with an uneven border left bare.

The looping strokes of graphite covering nearly all of a roughly 9-by-22-foot sheet of paper are richly sensual in "Inmost," suggesting a maturation of the "existence" theme as the artist allows the viewer a glimpse into her very soul.

Honolulu artist Yamaguchi reveals her soul in a totally different manner. She does so by means of a videotaped puppet show, the puppets manipulated by Yamaguchi herself in the guise of a hooded and gloved puppeteer, so that the viewer sees only of Yamaguchi what Yamaguchi wants us to see.

In the 15-minute video, titled "The Interview," the disarming little creatures she manipulates — Frank, Bob and Baba, and the anonymous bored interviewer — become extensions of the artist; their sorrows and joys are hers and vice versa.

The narrative is loopy, a series of bumbling non sequiturs that lead nowhere in particular, suggesting an existential theme that is surely deliberate, especially if we see the hooded puppeteer as one and the same with her characters. But forgetting complex readings of the video, it is just downright fun.

The puppets are engaging, the sets are clever and the mood is upbeat. Maybe we should leave it at that.

Once again Jay Jensen, associate director and chief curator at the Contemporary Museum, demonstrates a keen and discerning curatorial eye. And the artists demonstrate that despite Hawai'i's inherent isolation, stirring, relevant works of art abound here. Lucky we live Hawai'i, I say.

Virginia Wageman can be reached at VWageman@aol.com.