Just when you’re cruising comfortably past the predictable local art scene, you’re sideswiped by a gang of unknowns — and it’s Tremont gallerist Dana Depew behind the wheel. Every summer for the past five years, Asterisk Gallery’s maverick director has hunted down 19 local artists and grabbed a representative sampling of their work for an annual survey called, naturally, 19. The resulting show mixes a sprinkling of Cleveland art-scene veterans into a biggish batch of exciting newcomers.
Depew doesn’t have the inclination or space to show everything;
Asterisk isn’t MOCA. Photography is absent from 2009’s installment
(except for conceptual artist Bruce Edwards’ reflective series of
“Beach Party” stills taken from a TV screen, showing the indescribable
Annette Funicello with Disney-studio male counterparts), and there’s no
actual performance. On the other hand, Laszlo Gyorki’s “Pencil Pushers”
— consisting of a number of pencils apparently shoved violently
into one of the gallery’s load-bearing pillars, then broken off —
is the next best thing to live action, evoking close encounters with
cactus, porcupines and killer bees, or maybe a really rough season
finale of The Office. Gyorki also shows an impressive 3D frieze
made from discarded packing forms as an example of future
archaeological reconstructions of our culture’s preoccupations.
Lively and lyrical abstract oil-and-pen-on-canvas paintings by Dana
Oldfather speak of identity and freedom, scooped from contrasting
shapes and textures, while Sunia Boneham’s fun, complicated, colorful
paintings smeared on things like wire and beer cans wind out from the
wall like a bad hair day in a dumpster. Haunted-seeming paintings by
Janet Snell (with titles like “He looks with his one good eye”), a
selection of experimental works on canvas by Brian McCollum and
paintings on archetypal themes by well-known Cleveland artist Lisa
Kenion, all tucked into the basement, no doubt merit a more formal
presentation.
Back upstairs, Robin Latkovich and Yvonne Bakale present delicate,
diminutive landscape-based works touching on big issues like awe and
environmental degradation, and painter William Rupnik has some splashy
things to say about beauty and bulimia. But perhaps the strongest,
strangest paintings are those of Linda Herman in her installation-like
suite of works titled “Summer of ’69.” These are gut-wrenching
meditations on the Apollo 11 lunar landing and the death of her mother
in a car accident 10 days afterwards.
There’s a thick, weathered wooden beam by conceptual sculptor Jake
Beckman that appears to lean and sink into a free-standing wall, Shauna
Merriman’s clay and wax studies of body tissue, Sally Hudak’s ceramic
mouths fading into a section of brick wall and Elizabeth Emery’s
miniature landscape studies in found-material texture and color.
Right in the front of the gallery, Cathy Kasdan’s amazing wardrobe
includes an Icelandic sweater knitted from plastic shopping bags. Two
extraordinary videos — one by Laila Voss depicting cycles of
destruction and the other by Thea Miklowski showing bare feet and legs
sliding and inching their way from bed to street in an epic journey
— are among the strongest works here. Conceptualist Michael
Wallace shows us the deadpan greeting cards he sent to notorious
crooked politicos like San Francisco’s Ed Jew and deposed Illinois
Governor Rod Blagojevich, along with their bemused responses. If you’re
headed to 19, prepare to have your mind stretched and blown.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2009.