“Twilight
Time” is an exploration of the ambiguity of human endeavor. It features
the work of ten artists whose imagery presents a range of signification
alternating between the iconic and the narrative, applied sometimes
with humor or menace, but always with a sensitivity to the innate
humanity of the subject. For instance, in
Estrangement from Nature by
Jamie Chiarello, a woman stands beneath a tall tree wearing a hat made
of earth while an unknown collaborator sprinkles water on it to grow
flowers, a fitting metaphor for human self-involvement from which
emerges a beauty at one with the powers of nature, even as the woman
remains stolidly unaware of her transformation. In the collage
Deepest
Blue 2 by
Emmanuelle Gauthier, we are presented with a palimpsest of
images of empire, between the inside of a church and the exterior of a
castle. The drawing
Our Desire by
Liz Insogna depicts a fantastic and
eerily beguiling communication of lust in which mysterious eyes spy the
two from either corner. Do they seem intimacy, fleeing from the world,
or does their desire create the world around them?
Thrall by
Michael
Norkin also presents a world pieces together by images of desire, each
seen to interact with one another, though their textual sources are
different.
Unfurled by
Jeremy Olson presents us
with people whose bodies are being attacked, or whose unconscious are
actively manifesting, amoebic masses which resemble nothing so much as
ghosts or viruses. In two untitled paintings by
Leemour Pelli, liminally
depicted protagonists encounter forms which resemble bodily organs,
sources of illumination, or portals to another plane of existence (or
all three at once). Three watercolors by
Deborah Pohl present Arcadian
landscapes in which disembodied persons identified only by coyly
flashing eyes, resembling those of cartoon figures from an idle
childhood, cute and malevolent at the same time.
Study for War Paint
by
Grace Roselli is a portrait of an Arab woman who holds her hand in
front of her marked face, the image of her rising above a modern city.
She is marked by fate, yet she hides her identity, whether for shame or
because she prizes her anonymity, we do not know.
Resource Switchboard
by
Michael Schall makes the land itself into a entity, connected to a
mysterious system of feeds as if drawing power from it, or giving it
sustenance. The pop-up and print on view by
Conrad Vogel presents
morally charged scenes equally influenced by history, literature, and
the follies of mankind that are only resolved in muted self-destruction
that is aptly bathetic.
This exhibition suits its season as well as its
theme: a time of transition—when we are first made conscious of the
workings of the night world and are given a momentary yet fleeting
glimpse which reveals that the same rules apply in either sphere.
Uncertainty is not the proprietary tenor of the night; it merely hides
the horrors of natural law from the light of human reason and moral
justification. Perhaps we are living in a dark age. But I prefer a more
transitive analogy: that we are living in perpetual twilight, as we
always have, partially in reason and partially in doubt. Each of us may
act as agents of change, and as arbiters of succession.
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| Liz Insogna |
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| Jamie Chiarello |
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| Emmanuelle Gauthier |
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| Michael Norkin |
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Jeremy Olson
|
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| Michael Schall |
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| Conrad Vogel |
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