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Looking sketchy
‘Stray Dogs’ at the Gardner, Impersonature at artSPACE@16
BY RANDI HOPKINS
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The graphic novels of Croatian artist Danijel Zezelj are full of dark and Kafka-esque scenes — or are they more Borgesian? — remarkable for their steeply tilting vertical panels within panels, sharp and menacing architecture, and shadowy lurking figures. Well known in Europe for his individual style of cartooning and storytelling, Zezelj was invited to spend June 2004 as the 50th Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and in honor of that quietly amazing program nurturing contemporary art and artists, his work will be exhibited in "Stray Dogs," which opens on June 24. The Gardner folks, you’ll recall, are bound by Mrs. Jack’s will to preserve her museum exactly as she created it, but museum director Anne Hawley has brought in some fresh air with the residency program, which since 1992 has offered selected contemporary artists a chance to live upstairs at the museum and explore it as they choose. Some of the visiting artists, like Zezelj, go on to share their experience in the form of exhibitions of contemporary art in the tiny gallery near the restrooms on the museum’s ground floor, an area not restricted by the will. The current director of the residency program, Gardner Museum curator of contemporary art Pieranna Cavalchini, has been at the helm of this program for the past four years, and in this period, exhibitions by artists including Joseph Kosuth, Elaine Reichek, and Nari Ward have graced the gallery, each an unexpected take. In "Stray Dogs," Zezelj presents a graphic reflection on place and displacement through the fictional "memoir" of a journalist musing on her surroundings as she travels through gloomy cityscapes and shady interiors, including the very recognizable galleries, terraces, and balconies of the Gardner. Out in the bright sunshine, by contrast, "Impersonature" opens at artSPACE@16 in Malden on June 18 with its five artists — Leigh Hall, Kim Salerno, Marcella Anna Stasa, Dustin Tracy, and Jamie Vasta — focusing on our natural environment. Not that this is your garden-variety view of nature. Salerno invites us to challenge our assumptions about "realism" in art by making paintings that combine images of nature from Hudson River School landscapes to Chinese screen painting and arabesques from Islamic pattern design; her materials include sequins and pipe cleaners. Hall offers a wall-drawing installation of grass, vines, and other plants rendered at larger-than-life scale to convey, as the exhibition press material explains, "the sense of discovery and exploration she feels when confronted with that rotting leaf on the sidewalk, or thicket of undergrowth in the woods." These artists are trying to get us to re-examine the many views of nature that culture has presented us with, views that unconsciously color our experience. "Stray Dogs: Danijel Zezelj" is at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 the Fenway in Boston, June 24 through August 21; call (617) 566-1401. "Impersonature" is at artSPACE@16, 16 Princeton Road in Malden, June 18 through July 16, with a free public potluck reception on June 25 from 2 to 5 p.m. and a gallery talk at 3 p.m.; call (781) 321-8058.
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