Sense of Presence: Neosacred Objects exhibit has attractive shine, but falls short of promise

by William Jaeger
Special to the Times Union

Curator Stephen Dietemann surely meant well when he collected three sculptors’ work into an exhibition titled The Neosacred Object. But the show’s invented notion of the neosacred, calling to mind the history of holy objects in art as well as the spiritual itself, promises far more than is actually on display at the Fulton Street Gallery in Troy.

The exhibition is pretty much solely about art and aesthetic issues, which is too bad: Seeing artists really approach the sacred, however defined, would be worthwhile. Instead, Libby Barker, Ann Jon and Susan Rodgers make wall-hung sculptures that attempt, and sometimes pull off, a sense of presence.

But giving an art object presence is surely a prerequisite of art, not just of sacred things. All three artists also have a similar kinship in their use of ambiguous and vaguely archetypal elements, which appear in many works. They also share a leaning toward the decorative that gives the show a clean, attractive shine.

The most clearly successful pieces overall are the shields by Jon. Four of these are uncomplicated in shape: slender, 6 feet tall and concave, tapering to a point on the bottom. They are decorated with simple, primitivist symbols such as a spiral and a series of serpentine lines. And they have convincing formal authority, like ritual shields meant more for a temple — or an art gallery — than a battlefield.

If these four succeed in primal, ornamental terms, two other shields attempt something more loaded and more problematic. Each is a basic brown and white circular shape with two protrusions below, like legs. At the “crotch” of each are orange genitals — a partially de-kernelled corn cob for Male Shield and a fold of orange leather for Female Shield.

Though just as well-made and attractive as the others, these become less abstract and more illustrative. And their representational elements are original in the details but a little too clever and superficial to mean a whole lot.

Such overly smart, dispassionate attitudes are sometimes seen in the diverse works by Barker, who bends over backward to appropriate an appearance of rural primitivism in her assemblages. The found materials in all of them — weathered wood, for example — give them abundant character. Barker then goes on to add often-used surrealist elements such as doll parts to lend an aura of so-called depth.

In fact, these are merely facile works. They look nice — tastefully assembled, aesthetically well-balanced — and this, to a large extent, saves them. But the objects so lack original ideas, and they so plainly lack real feeling, that they rebuff all seriousness.

Rodgers’ geometric grids and other arrangements of pieces of metal tend the most toward minimalist severity. They have slightly irregular edges and surfaces that keep them from seeming machine-made, but they’re nevertheless regimented and cold. For art this removed from expressive or organic complexity, the pieces feel fatally sloppy and unsure of themselves.

Consider: In each of three untitled works, a small, compact grid of metal squares is hung in the center of a large, plain sheet of aluminum. The background is insubstantial and contributes nothing. The grids themselves draw you in; they’re only a set of squarish metal pieces in a group, however, so you step back and try to engage them for their aura, or for some kind of formal intensity. Neither is evident.

Only in Rodgers’ Interior, which uses several different kinds of materials in an arrangement something like an altar, is there a feeling of resolution (but still no conviction). Here, perhaps, we come closest to the theme of the show, in the artist’s direct inspiration from traditional sacred sites. If only it was more than a weak reflection of an idea.

In a separate show at the gallery, David Ricci has two bodies of large color photographs on view. Upstairs, 11 busy, formally controlled views of amusements parks, all from the early 1990s, show the complex layers of lines made by the rides and games, and show how they can be intelligently compressed into single images. They are striking despite being devoid of the keen sense of observation and understanding that so much enhances this kind of straight shooting.

On the first floor in the workroom, seven prints from the late 1990s reveal how Ricci has continued to apply his formal complexities to junkyards and scenes of demolition. Again, he gives visual order to what might seem like chaos and makes his images fascinating to look at, if not especially engaging to think about.

Even the odd, pervasive emptiness in most of Ricci's scenes seems merely incidental. Like much of the sculpture in the other show, these are works that are content with their visual polish, ignoring their insidious conceptual and emotional poverty.

Facts:

Exhibition: Neosacred Objects and Photographs by David Ricci
Where: Fulton Street Gallery, 408 Fulton St., Troy
Hours: 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, Fridays until 9 p.m.
When: through October 9, 1999.
Info: 518/274-8464

Article from the Times Union Arts Section (Sunday, September 19, 1999)

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