Art
Exhibit's 'tough' art is interesting but lacks edge
By Virginia Wageman
Advertiser Art Critic
The juror for the 2001 edition of Artists of Hawai'i was Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where in 1999, the exhibition "Sensation" had the art world abuzz for its so-called "difficult" art — i.e., art with political or sexual content that many people, including New York's mayor, found offensive.
For Artists of Hawai'i, Lehman said that he looked for art that was "tough instead of safe," and to a degree, he found it.
Many of the works have a suggestion of violence — such as Sally French's "Bad Baby," a manipulated color photograph in which a child's doll appears as a grotesque object of abuse, or Johannette Rowley's "Mace," a pair of menacing stiletto-heeled shoes embedded with metal spikes and accompanied by a billy club.
K.C. Smith's series of six paintings, "The Ladies," carries a brazen message cloaked in cartoony portraits of stylish women's faces — an approach that's particularly successful.
There's a little in-your-face sexuality, the most obvious example being Twain Newhart's rather lewd black-and-white photograph of a nude woman, "In Your Dreams." There are other photographs of unclothed people but no others particularly charged.
And that's the problem with this "tough" art; it may touch on probing or controversial issues, but there is not much of an edge, with a few notable exceptions.
The medium of photography is more apparent here than in most Hawai'i group shows, perhaps because it allows for graphic depictions. However, many of the photos suffer from poor focus, wishy-washy contrast or simply not very interesting content.
Among exceptions are Adam Jung's "Prayer," a sepia-toned photograph of a person's sand-covered back; Kapulani Landgraf's "Makole," a manipulated silverprint that speaks to our fear of the unfamiliar; and Jean-Jacques Dicker's blue-toned photos of dreary sights in India and Laos.
Where Artists of Hawai'i excels is not so much in the works intended to be probing so much as in the many examples of fine handwork, such as Sue Boyz's intricate bowl woven of knotless thread in a careful black-and-white harlequin pattern, or Tae Kitakata's delicate boxes constructed of sewn-together squares cut from leaves.
The most conceptually elegant piece in the show is Deborah Nehmad's pyrographic work, "Papered Over," which includes embossing, debossing, typescript and meticulous handwriting, with a large area covered with minute penciled numbers, each representing a degree of pain.
Also notable among conceptually driven pieces are those by Gaye Chan, Jacqueline Lee and Allison Roscoe, and a carefully constructed narrative photograph by Cade Roster.
Painting is wonderfully represented by Chris Campbell's "Artist's Model — Study in Black and White," a portrait of a Hawaiian woman with a Matisse-like figure in the background, and by Jason Teraoka's "Me, Myself and I," a marvelous self-portrait of the artist swimming in a vast sea.
Also exceptional are paintings by Megumi Endo, Akira Iha, Ed Lane and Karen Lee, and watercolors by Mapuana and Holger Schramm.
Several artists make incredible use of natural materials, including Nicole Chan, working with seeds and bean curd; Mika McCann, whose 3-foot-tall basket is woven from the bark of a wattle tree; and especially Madeleine Sšder, who has molded bark and seeds in carefully planned patterns over female forms made of ultracal (a synthetic material).
There are pieces that engage with their wittiness, such as Lynn Schoonejongen Ohtani's papier-machŽ cat, Rich Richardson's star-shaped light fixtures, and Lena Lei Ching's photographs of a woman (herself?) dressed in the same brightly patterned cloth that covers the walls, ceiling, floor, and furniture of the room she is in. Also fun is a polyester resin rocket made by Remington Scott and Karin Last.
A number of outstanding ceramics are included in the exhibition, with pieces by Jeffrey Ideta, Kyle Kamaunu, Kenny Kicklighter, David Kuraoka, Steve Martin, Martin B. Wall and Richard Weber. Glassworks by Anthony Borgioli and Michael Mortara are also noteworthy.
It would seem that in his quest for the "tough instead of safe," Lehman found little truly tough but a lot that would not be categorized as safe, work that excites by virtue of the artists' command of media and ideas.
Too bad that almost simultaneously with the opening of Artists of Hawai'i, the Academy of Arts postponed the showing of feminist films by Alice Anne Parker. The academy's somewhat daring selection of a juror — and that juror's attempt to select works that are more than just pleasing to the eye — has been offset by this unfortunate semblance of censorship.
Three photographers
Concurrently with Artists of Hawai'i and in the same gallery, three established photographers — Paul Kodama, Franco Salmoiraghi and Shuzo Uemoto — are exhibiting work that is sublime. This selection more than makes up for the somewhat lackluster showing of photos in the juried show.
Especially stirring are Uemoto's Iris-printed photographs of haole (or false) koa, which grows in dense thickets in Hawai'i's lowland areas.
Paul Kodama's delicate contact prints, each about 9 by 13 inches, document foreign travels, and Franco Salmoiraghi's dreamy, almost eerie, prints are veiled with suggestions of death and decay.
Virginia Wageman can be reached at VWageman@aol.com.
