Exhibit reveals personal, spiritual dimensions of Hawai'i art
By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic
| • | The Contemporary Museum Biennial Exhibition of Hawai'i Artists
Today through Aug. 31 When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m, Tuesdays through Saturdays; noon to 4 p.m. Sundays Where: 2411 Makiki Heights Drive Information: 526-0232 |
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Chief curator James Jensen and assistant curator Allison Wong selected six island artists to express a wide range of contemporary viewpoints on culture, society, politics, nature, self-awareness and the spirit world. Artist, teacher and art critic Marcia Morse wrote the catalog.
The biennial gives the selected artists full reign to express themselves. It gives them the freedom to explore desired media and ideas, and it gives the public an opportunity to understand each artist more fully.
The results of this year's exhibit flourish in the precisely crafted, conceptual and esoteric art works that articulate both our spiritual and material worlds — in Hawai'i and around the world.
The six artists are Kaili Chun, Wayne Morioka and Deborah Gottheil Nehmad (from O'ahu), Tom Lieber (from Koloa, Kaua'i), Walter G. Nottingham (from Hilo, Big Island) and Michael Takemoto (from Kula, Maui).
Aloha as life source
Kaili Chun is motivated by her Hawaiian heritage. In her apprenticeship with Wright Elemakule Bowman Sr., a master craftsman and canoe builder, she learned the refinements of working with wood.
We are greeted by her four tall koa 'o'o (Hawaiian digging tools) that also represent setting the foundation for a community and a family.
Traditionally, the tools are passed on from generation to generation. Chun carved the tools by hand. Layered with meaning, the title, "Ha," the Hawaiian word for four, is also the word for breath, says Chun.
"Aloha is a greeting with the breath of your life — a sign that you are connected to that person and to the breath of your ancestors in the present time."
Here, the metaphor suggests founding a new and larger community with aloha as its life source.
The two series of display cases or vitrines made of koa wood and glass inspire a sense of reverence.
The first series, tall and narrow, house three pairs of objects that symbolize quotes from " 'Olelo No'eau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings" by Mary Kawena Pukui.
"We all need to consider how to live here to be healthy in mind, body and spirit," says Chun. "These vitrines overlap in meaning to our environment — the land, sea and the sky."
The first pair of kukui-oil torches in "Build yourself a firm foundation before teaching others" represent light, knowledge, wisdom and the land. The burnt torch in one case has passed on its knowledge. The second torch is unlit, and signifies the future.
"It isn't a break in a gourd container that can be easily mended by sewing the parts together" pairs a case with a kahili (feather standard symbolic of royalty and government) created by Paulette
Kahalepuna with a vitrine that is empty, the door open.
"There is an opportunity for all of us here in Hawai'i to create a balance," says Chun. "The door is open for us to contribute."
Chun informs and teaches without giving answers. She is more interested in establishing a dialogue.
All the cases in this series have a private, empty space at the top to represent the limits of knowledge and the unknown.
The second series of five square cases engages the viewer from a more scientific approach.
"Science is not necessarily a fact but a theory," says Chun. "It is important to ask questions rather than just accept what we are told."
Inside the cases, flasks, Bunsen burners and figurines in distilled water cook an imaginative stew of racial and cultural integration (one white figurine in a flask filled with black figurines and one black figurine in a flask filled with white figurines, etc.).
Simple but powerful, Chun's elegant execution fosters self-awareness amidst allusions to ethnic cleansing and alternative life-styles.What would it take for us all to live together harmoniously?
Buddhism's many moods
The "Door Guardians: 108 Masks of the Buddhist Spirit World from Heaven to Hell" took Wayne Morioka seven and a half years to complete. In a small electric kiln (a gift from his sister) and with no prior formal ceramic training, Morioka shaped the masks using low-fire clay and minimal tools.
The smooth surfaces were burnished after firing the clay and a light earthy color was attained by applying oil pigments and linseed oil.
Installed against a red wall in five groups highlighted by five spotlights, they appear to pop out of the wall dramatically casting ghostlike shadows.
The eyes are all closed to symbolize the spirit world, and every ear is different.
However eerie some of the masks appear, they are also humorous, revealing a lighter side of Zen Buddhism — laughing one's way to enlightenment.
"Cellulite Demon Lurking in Middle Aged Thighs" and "Gautama Disguised As a Cone Head" tickle our imagination. And it was quite amusing to see an "Art Critic" mask.
The serious side of Morioka is revealed in the masks "Painful Memories of Kalaupapa" and "Man with Radiation Burn on His Face."
Beautiful expressions of wisdom, fear, kindness, joy and tenderness emanate from these groupings.
"Some people have said," says Morioka, "that when they get really close to the masks, they can feel them breathe."
Mark-making as metaphor
Deborah Gottheil Nehmad has taken a leap of faith and in the process has taken her medium of pyrography (art of burning designs onto wood, paper, leather, and other materials with a heated tool) to another level. Originally, it was a vehicle to express and transcend a condition of chronic back pain.
Through the meditative process of repetitive mark-making, she burns the paper with red-hot numerical metal punches that become a metaphor for numerical connections to her Jewish heritage (concentration-camp tattoos, number squares in the Kabbalah) and diagnostic tools to gauge the intensity of a person's pain.
If the numbers are hot enough, they flash when they burn the paper — softening the darker brown numerical marks with halos.
Numbers in this context have become her words. And her words have taken on new meanings in the shapes that have emerged — pulsating with life. Masses of chaotic numbers are ordered into such shapes as circles, triangles, and quadrilaterals in the series "analytical impressions."
The strange circular burn marks in the "homage to Eva" were not made from a metal punch but from a titanium screw that was removed from her back.
"(1-10) x 6" is her largest piece of work (59 x 126 inches) and from a distance translates into a lovely mirrored landscape. Six panels evocative of sky, water and mountains feather out and take shape from the layers of burned numbers.
Nehmad stays connected to the process more than the outcome, a style of working that she says is liberating. And this dedication has freed her. She has decided it is time to move on to another medium.
Truth, depth in structure
Walter G. Nottingham, who works in fiber, weaves a world of spirit and mystery into his 14 meticulously crafted mixed fiber series of constructions.
"It is important to work in a series," he says. "If you don't have a certain amount of structure, there is no truth, a depth of work and a commitment comes from setting up a limitation and working within that limitation. In a series, something will come up that could not have been done without doing the ones before it."
He admits, though, that if you are too technically involved you will lose your spontaneity.
He likes the meditative slowness of working with fiber and is fascinated by anthropology, shrines and tabernacles. His shrines are made from things that he has found and collected — as well as toothpicks, handmade paper, dyes, paints, waxed linen, bamboo, sticks and dried flower pods.
He focuses on using elements that emit an aura of energy.
In a tribute to his late wife, Nottingham's "LDYN" is a spirit house overflowing with symbolic objects both visible and hidden. A carved owl (symbolic of his wife), a photo of her, three carved birds in three small rooms that represent his three daughters, and six small, wrapped packages attached around the front of the shrine contain objects from the closest women in her life. Rather than being a somber memorial, it vibrates with a passionate red color and gives the impression of a celebration of life and her flight into the next world.
His crest-like series of 10 "Ahu" evokes an essence of primal potency and commands attention. Natural objects ordered and tamed by the hand of man co-exist in assembled details like prayers to God.
Through chaos, order
Tom Lieber's abstract oil paintings were originally drawn from nature. They poetically portray — through a more emotional use of color and dancing linear brush strokes — an expressionistic vision of nature that is more internal than external.
His series of eight paintings fill the gallery with a tone of visual music reminiscent of sweet jazz.
"I am an old-fashioned painter," he says, "and I like to work in a series. There are so many possibilities that come up with just one painting. Working this way gives me the opportunity to get some substance."
Meditative and intuitive, he finds drawing the chaos of exotic jungle growth a form of centering himself.
He applies those principles to painting. Large canvases, some as large as 72 by 80 inches, embrace merging fields of color hues (as in "Blue Sweep") and manage to strike a balance.
Although he is controlling the paints, roller and brush, Lieber has found a way to let go and to trust that the order will emerge in the process. It does.
The faces of evil
Michael Takemoto's installation "Roaches" fills a room with exactly that — 5,000 rubber cockroaches. The roaches form four wall-sized portraits of his idea of leaders of the axis of evil: Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Kim Jong II and George W. Bush.
"I used cockroaches because they're something we can all relate to here in Hawai'i," says Takemoto. "But I also wanted to remind viewers that the whole world is not Hawai'i. We are fortunate to live here, safe from terrorists' attacks. But these terrible things are happening everyday."
Roaches, typically an equalizer in that even the wealthiest of homes have them, take on another dimension when used as a metaphor for the personalities of these leaders. Here they do exactly what they are supposed to do — gross you out.
