Retrofitting the future

Detail from Sarah Peters, “Pastoral With Club,” 2007

Retrofitting the future
Everything that’s old is new again in Chelsea’s galleries

BY JEFFREY CYPHERS WRIGHT

There’s a whole lot of updating going on in the art world just now. At 303 Gallery David Thorpe presents a proclamation to his poem “Howle Howle” that resembles a copy of the “Desiderata.” Half century old photographs of handmade dolls by Morton Bartlett are at Julie Saul Gallery. David Packer at Lyons Wier-Ortt Contemporary has sculpted ceramic toy trains. And at Zwirner & Wirth (uptown) the show is called “Old School” and the invitation uses an image by Luis Cranach the Elder from 1530.

Some artists use an old-fashioned technique to create images. Such is the case at Schroeder Romero and Lurhing Augustine, where artists made photograms. The process, made famous by Man Ray and still used today by artists like Adam Fuss, is simple. Objects are placed on photographic paper and leave a silhouette when exposed to light.

Wendy Small at Schroeder Romero has updated the technique by using colored filters. Referencing antique French wallpaper, the resultant images drift in a happy space that negotiates the immediacy of posters and the gravitas of still-lifes. Her primary subjects are flowers and birds, projecting life, and as the show’s title “Coming in for the Kiss” implies, projecting life’s promulgation as well. Yet the models are clearly dead, instigating an ironic subtext. This irony is echoed in the elemental oppositions of her subjects — earth and air — which remain separate but codependent. Likewise, the birds, usually in pairs, follow one other discretely, promising union, but frozen alone.

Across the stalks, twigs, buds and wings that initially register in white, Small has skillfully layered light and color. Atmospheric shadows compliment the stark shapes. Her palette of warm reds and rich greens runs over into eye-dazzling tie die country.

In a semi-symmetric diptych, Small has placed her birds in a swirl of verdurous green leafs. They hover over a receding black portal. Their feathery outlines register green, blue and white.

Adding to the torque, the twin images of the diptych mirror each other asymmetrically and together form a sort of sideways S. In this powerful composition, we can imagine the buzz of eternity as well as the silence of the instant. Bravo.

Another artist creating photograms is Amy Granat who is known for manually scratching and degrading film. The damaged sections allow light to pass through. At an installation in Lurhing Augustine several photograms act as stationary counterpoints to the ghostly flickering of a film projection. In “Interflowerzone (Hello Cowgirl) #1” we see a couple of spindly flowers partially covered by three dark rectangles with doodles on them. The stark white flowers contrast with the darker geometries and all are strewn on a hazy bed of silver and gray.

Granat’s medium and its hues of black and white hearkens to the past. Her vaguely inscrutable subjects and iconoclastic techniques are objective, contemporary and avant.

Black and white also conjures the past in Sarah Peters pen and pencil drawings at Winkleman Gallery. The show, called “Being American,” reflects on early American art, when there was no academy to either nurture the natural talents or cull the amateurs. Consequently, egalitarian efforts ensued, marking our national conscious. While lacking in finesse, there was abundant earnestness and innovation. In paying homage to those nascent efforts, Peters recognizes their limitations as the key to their directness, which she further distills.

Using a lean line, the artist sketches her figures in forests and beneath cliffs. Their isolation mimics the situation of our early painters, thrust into a vast wilderness and cut off from Europe.

A commanding female stares straight out at us from a glen in “The Club.” While her countenance is serene and childlike, we sense a macabre presence. As if to hammer home the foreboding pall, a small, penciled figure of a man with a large club suspended over his head lurks in the background.

We can only interpret ourselves through an understanding of the past. These artists go one step further — they re-interpret who we are and where we’ve been.