Visual Art
REVIEW PAINTING AND MIXED MEDIA ERNST CARAMELL
Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 17 May eeee
Constructed from arrangements of geometric shapes. Caramelle's paintings exhibit a judicious use of colour. which he uses to manipulate the illusion of perspective and space. While these works are considered. they are not overtly restrained; the mixed media ‘View from the Below' features free. expressionistic brushstrokes. and the odd burgundy curlicue. layered over a more structured geometric base. The exhibition also includes works created by leaving sugar paper out in the sun. This incredibly simple. almost incidental. technique has been used to great effect in two beautiful works featuring geometric shapes in varying intensities of blue.
Caramelle‘s ability to disrupt the viewer's sense of space is not confined to works on wood and paper. but extends onto the walls of the gallery. While echoing the shapes and forms found within his other works. these ‘spatial interventions‘ subtly alter the gallery space. A rusty red rectangle intersects an open doon/vay at a skewed angle. while a black border, which could easily slide by completely unnoticed. creates the disorientating illusion that the room is on a slant.
In the overwhelming avalanche of art being presented as part of Gi. Caramelle's work stands out as deserving of a viewer's time.
(Liz Shannon)
:1
REVIEW PAINTING. PRINT. SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY MATERNITY: IMAGES OF MOTHERHOOD Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 22 Jun 000
This exhibition takes us down the well-trodden path of ‘maternity in art' and. for the most part. succeeds in eliciting ideas beyond the usual platitudes. While some of the views of motherhood are predictable and even cliched (consider William Strang's etching of an impoverished mother and children in relation to Dorothea Lange's famous FSA photograph ‘Migrant Mother'), many of the contemporary pieces. particularly those by women. add nuance to the exhibition's theme and content. Works by Christine Borland. Kerry Stewart and Moyna Flannigan are particularly challenging and affecting, and combat a rose-tinted outlook.
While the Quality of the artworks featured is invariably high, the exhibition's interpretation deflates the potential impact of some of the artworks. The leaflet and label text is rather dictatorial in tone, and tends to close down rather than open up the range of ideas relating to the concept of maternity. There is a heavy- handed emphasis upon placing a Western Christian interpretation upon many of the works (sometimes quite rightly. in the case of Botticelli, Domenichino and Robert Sargent Austin), which seems too narrow for some of the more modern pieces. such as Eduardo Paolozzi's brilliant collage ‘Maternity'. As many visitors spend more time reading gallery labels than looking at the art, it might be preferable to tone down the text and allow the viewers to draw their own conclusions from the works on show. (Liz Shannon)
From Sweet Berry Sonnetts
REVIEW FILM. PERFORMANCE AND PAINTING KALUP LINZY Washington Garcia, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Apr 0000.
New-York based Kalup Linzy is more Vaginal Davis than a ‘Paris is Burning’ starlet, more Judy la Bruce (Bruce’s alter-ego) than Hedwig. But it cannot be denied that all of these ‘drag abortions’ (as la Bruce would have it) are there in the performances and films that he has brought to Glasgow International.
Linzy’s mock soap operas and cod MTV-style pop videos would not look out of place on Manhattan Cable - a public access TV operation that let all the mad men and women in New York doll themselves up and act out. One could say that Linzy takes all of this and more as his subject matter, that his work is some kind of ‘meta-drag’, but that would be preposterous. It’s impossible to separate this ‘intelligent’ copy from the ‘stupid’ original - that is his slippery point.
In the seven-minute mini-soap ‘KK Queens’, Linzy appears as Dinah Cole, one of his many fragmented
crackpot art femmes, being interviewed over the phone by an art world drone. Dinah doesn’t take any shit; she’s a tough cookie, but the mask slips and her fears of being ignored and rejected finally escape. In the room at the back of the gallery we are presented with more talented young women, this time singing their hearts out in trashy music videos. There are songs about anuses, chewing gum, girlfriends, boyfriends and ‘sweet berries’ - one can only guess what they are. It is impossible to enter into the content of every one of these divaesque-warblings here, but, damn, these girls can sing. Out in the light of the main gallery are paintings by another persona: ‘Katonya’, where the \ reduction of women to skirts and wigs says more about society at large than the world of the gallery.
If you like your chicks black, sassy and quick, then Linzy’s your girl. Yes, this work is about gender confusion. It’s about all the things that have been theorised to death and badly realised. You won’t need a PhD in Queer theory to understand it, but it might help. (Alexander Kennedy)
24 Apr—8 May 2008 TN! LIST 101