What art critics and curators like to call "new media" mixes with more traditional approaches to art in the "2003 DeCordova Annual Exhibition" opening at the stately DeCordova Museum in Lincoln on June 7. Digital and installation art are seen together with art-making processes that seem old (like knitting, and woodwork), but are undeniably new in their use of envelope-pushing materials and unexpected scale. The DeCordova has been presenting annual exhibitions of work by a select group of regional artists since 1989 (the show was known as "Visions/Artists" until 1998), and this year’s talented participants include 11 artists from four New England states, each chosen for his or her special output, and not on the basis of an underlying theme or any other common element.
"I want my sculpture to be as approachable as an all-night diner," writes participating artist Dave Cole, but judging from the maquette for his 14-foot pink teddy bear, hand-knit from commercial-grade fiberglass insulation, Cole’s work is hardly gingham curtains and apple pie. Bending gender roles, he combines the "feminine" art of knitting with hazardous industrial materials to witty, biting effect. Norms are also challenged in painter Hannah Barrett’s androgynous hybrid portraits of her parents, which present a surreal take on family relationships, seeming at once to parody traditional family portraiture and to issue some dire cultural warning via paint on digital photomontage.
There’s straightforward photography here too, including the work of Morgan Cohen, who photographs stains on a wall or the drain in a bathtub to isolate overlooked details of daily life, and Laura McPhee, who traveled the globe to photograph the mix of cultures in Calcutta. Close examination of the ordinary is an idea that runs through the show, in works like Jane Masters’s take on a routinely overlooked object — wallpaper. Masters raises issues of function and design by carefully drawing and hand-printing her own repeated, decorative shapes onto blank wallpaper, then laboriously papering the museum’s walls with the results.
An almost nostalgic sense of time's passing imbues some work, with artists using found or antiquated materials to forge physical and emotional connections. Bruce Bemis works movie magic with installations of short, flickering films that include the whirring projectors themselves. And Steve Hollinger’s light-activated mechanical sculptures, made mostly from found objects, occupy middle ground between art and science — 16th-century science, that is. Hollinger combines rudimentary mechanics with awe for the natural world.
A sense of play and humor animates some of the selections, including work by Heather Hobler-Keene, who meticulously paints and cuts wood into psychedelic, suggestive shapes and interrelated forms (little lips? rising bubbles?), then arrays them within wooden confines or directly on vast stretches of wall. Also smile-inducing is the rotund work of Lars-Erik Fisk, for whom the sphere’s the thing. Fisk transforms familiar objects like barns and Volkswagens into big balls, distilling their core qualities to create roundly recognizable versions of his source images. Un-arty materials are used to wonderful effect by artists Jennifer Maestre and John Bisbee. Maestre’s prickly, organic-looking sculptures constructed of sharpened pencil stubs are a natural result of her observation that "many creative endeavors begin with the nicely sharpened pencil and a two-dimensional surface." Maestre has pushed two dimensions to three with sculptures that look like they might well need a muzzle. And 12-inch spikes are the medium of choice for sculptor John Bisbee, who transforms these eminently functional, overachieving nails into abstract forms he describes as "bioindustrial." Once again, the DeCordova Annual promises a lot of food for artistic thought, not to mention an amazing place for a picnic — the exhibition’s up all summer.
"The 2003 DeCordova Annual Exhibition" is at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, June 7 through August 31; visit www.decordova.org or call (781) 259-8355.
