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Art Review: Be Not Still at di Rosa

Art Review: Be Not Still at di Rosa

Review: Be Not Still Part Two

The faces of five hundred El Salvadorian immigrants look, innocently, into the center of the room.  A screen, showing a film of dancers, writhing over a stump burned by last October’s wild fires, hangs from the ceiling.  Five hundred red and orange tambourines dangle in mid air, gently disturbed by a whirring fan.

Sound weird?  It may. But the spectacle of it is a sight to behold.  It is an exhibit whose quality is in calibur of the finest museums in the world. It will be well worth your time to go see the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art’s second installment of their series Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times.

For years the di Rosa was known for its eclectic collection of art made by artists from the Bay Area.  But Robert Sain, di Rosa’s new director, has decided to commission three large scale installations that speak to these “Uncertain Times.”

Just like Part One of Be Not Still, the exhibit begins in Gallery One, where di Rosa has asked the artist Lexa Walsh to take a selection of works from the permanent collection and use them to illustrate a theme.  

This time, the theme is “assembly” and Walsh as arranged the pieces to represent the idea of assembly and how assemblies - protests, demonstrations, strikes, marches - are so common that they seem intrinsic to the very nature of our political life.

Walsh primarily chose pieces from the collection that are figurative, representations of the human body in a myriad of poses, colors, materials and orientations, as the actual person is the physical manifestation of an assembly.  Walsh was very deliberate in her placement of the pieces relative to one another, and it’s in their placement that the message behind the exhibit becomes clear.

Walsh said, “I was looking at how people assemble in protest and the choreography of those, what are the motions that we make and the stances we are in.  Of course these works can’t move, but I went searching for figurative works in the collection first that could be anthropomorphized. I think of the sculptural works as participants in the activity and the portraiture staring at you as witnesses.  And then I invite the visitor to choose where they are.”

That idea is first communicated at the beginning of the exhibition where Viola Frey’s life sized, multicolored ceramic statue of an older woman wearing a straw hat with flowers and a waistcoat, looks at a picture on the wall of Goofy, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck reenacting the flag raising of Iwo Jima.  This juxtaposition, of a proper older lady, gazing, perplexed, at the irreverence of cartoon characters replaying a sacred moment in American history, is emblematic of how some members of society are content with the status quo, and others feel compelled to upend that very same status quo, which is often what leads one to protest.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is a collection of figures that all face the same way.  An onyx colored bust of a businessman with a shoe in his mouth; a greyish blue metallic, taciturn looking man with a rectangular torso and arms that are flailing; a ghoulish blue and black figure that seems to have been reanimated out of a graveyard; all march toward a fiery red and yellow wall meant to symbolize, Walsh says, the ‘fire and fury’ that protestors march toward, or the conflict that sparks a protest to begin with, or the wildfires that threatened the di Rosa last October.

Dedicating Gallery One to an arrangement of the permanent collection is a brilliant way to employ the art while the major exhibition space - Gallery Two - is in use by the commissioned work.  In a way Gallery One is a prelude to the main event in Gallery Two.

Victor Cartagena is a El Salvadorian artist who came to this country in 1985.  As a latino immigrant, his work explores what it means to be in the United States, but not from the United States.  Given his origin in Central America, he has a special affinity for the plight of immigrants who are trying to gain entry into this country.

His installation consists of a collection of photos of faces, all mounted on stakes.  The faces were originally passport photos taken in a shop El Salvador of people who were looking to leave the country.  The stakes are meant to evoke the signs protestors hold up. Seeing them there, 500 laid against the wall, it’s almost as if Cartagena is encouraging the viewer to pick one up and take to the streets to spread awareness about the treatment of immigrants from south of the border.

The work is especially prescient given the recent immigration policy to separate parents from their children as they are trying to gain entry into this country.  Cartagena planned the installation before that took place. But then, in retrospect, he decided to separate out all the children’s passport photos, and they line a separate wall, across from the adults, which evokes a sense of loneliness, giving the viewer a palpable, concrete idea of what that their experience must be like.

The second commissioned work is by Ranu Mukherjee.  Projected on a screen hanging from the ceiling is a film of dancers writhing around a burned tree stump.  While the theme of this installation was “health” the work seemed to have more to do with resiliency. Rather than shy away from the devastation of the fires, the dancers are immersing themselves in it.  They roll and ooze around the charred wood as if on a waterbed, but that is made from the absolute opposite of water. Rather than run away from the awful looking stump, they wallow in it. Its as if they are physically looking to learn the lessons the fires can teach us by embracing what is left over, rather than regretting the destruction and doing everything one can to forget it.

The third work is by Lava Thomas and consists of almost 500 tambourines suspended by imperceptible wire from the ceiling.  Several fans gently blow air through them, making them sway back and forth, almost like a wind chime.

Thomas has made several works with tambourines because she thinks that instrument is the most egalitarian.  Anyone can use a tambourine. They’re not expensive, they’re portable, and they make noise - useful in any protest.

The drums of the tambourines are either red or orange, whose color, illuminated by the skylight above, makes them glow.  They seem to radiate the rage and fury some protests can exhibit. They swing as a group moving together, just as an assembly of protestors lumbers toward its goal.

The three works together form a sort of trilogy.  Cartagena’s somber, quiet photos are meditative, pensive.  That is followed by Mukherjee’s meditative, pensive nymphes, communing very intimately with a burned tree stump.  And finally, a visual cacophony of percussion instruments, waving gently in the artificial breeze, is almost a relief from the heaviness of the first two works.

Pieces in the di Rosa’s collection may shock you.  You may think they’re vulgar, obscene, flippant and in bad taste.  You may wonder why on Earth someone would pay money for something like this, and then worship it in a museum.

You are not alone.  That has been a criticism of modern art ever since Marcel Duchamp mounted a urinal in a gallery and called it art.

But here is some advice: don’t judge.  One man’s trash, is indeed, another man’s treasure.  What you find in poor taste, may be the key to another person’s fuller understanding of the world.

When you walk into the gallery, take things for what they are.  Some artist, somewhere, was inspired to create this object. Consider the object, and try to imagine what nature of the  inspiration the artist felt in order to create something that looks like that. Then think about how looking at the object makes you feel, what emotions or thoughts it evokes.  Let that feeling be your response and take that response with you, grow from that response; learn about yourself from that very response.

Moreover, if you’re still having trouble with it, don’t take it too seriously.  It seems the preciousness that curators, art critics and the whole studied control of an art museum, intimidates people.  So, think of the experience as entertainment. Have fun with it. You may see something that's offensive, or disgusting, or scary - trust me, Rene di Rosa did not shy away from controversy in painting, sculpture or objet d’art - but remember it’s just art.

If you feel uneasy, move on to the next piece.  Eventually, you’ll find something that is beautiful, that takes your breath away.  Or, in the case of the di Rosa, something that’s funny. Obviously, a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit, hanging from a tree by its tail as if it were a possum thats asleep, is funny.  When do you see a car in a tree? You will at the di Rosa.

An visit to an art museum can be pure fun.  And entertaining afternoon filled with epiphanies and new experiences.  Think of it like sophisticated TV. The art is there, for better or worse.  The experience you get, like so many things, depends on you.

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