underCURRENT/overVIEW 6 continues Tampa Museum of Art's commitment to artists working across Florida's West Central Coast. Seventeen (from five counties) are in this broad survey organized by the museum's curator of contemporary art, Elaine Gustafson, who selected the works. Artists range from newly emerged to long-established work in all contemporary genres, from electronic media and photography to painting, works on paper, sculpture, and installation.
Despite a beautifully installed show-stopper by recent University South Florida grad Yudit Naage, plus pockets of really decent art, the exhibition fails to sustain the kind of high energy necessary to convert comfortable art into memorable. That makes it more of a snoozer than fire-and-brimstone. But mostly I'm disappointed that, as a whole, underCURRENT/overVIEW 6 fails to reflect the inescapable reality and intensity of a world in chaos.
I'm not suggesting it was necessary to choose art devoted to 9/11, but the survey would have had greater impact by acknowledging the dynamic of our altered existence and selecting artists accordingly. This was a lost opportunity for Tampa's major museum to make a grand statement reflecting our New World Order.
Indeed, the exhibition needed more cutting-edge art and more dynamic selections. Ironically, the specter of repressive societies intent on destroying America makes progressive or challenging art more desirable than ever. However cynical our reactions to some of this material, it nevertheless exudes vitality and reminds us that no matter how horrific the outer world gets, we're still alive and well and moving forward.
Within this rationale, retro- and historically based art seem so out of place.
All of this makes Hungarian-born Naage's installation even more exciting. It consists of three monumental upside-down umbrellas (crafted from assorted media like pantyhose, latex and food color), which immediately dominate the gallery entrance. Two organic-like creations, wonderfully bizarre and unsettling, even grotesque, sit on the polished wooden floor where they speak to issues of femaleness and vulnerability and everything despised by repressive societies. Naage's work has never looked better. I've seen it at Centre Gallery and Covivant, and if ever there's a case for museum exhibitions over alternative venues, this is it. If the artist's pieces exuded promise in the past, they lacked the luster and power they project in this space.
Not all of the challenging contemporary art in this show completely works, though.
J. Jaia Chen's installation of soft-sculptures and watercolor images of familiar objects has all the right components and a circular painted wall to hold the eye, yet it lacks cohesive visual impact because the objects are too distanced from each other.
University of Tampa professor Joanne Steinhardt's digitally projected interactive installation does deliver considerable visual impact. Before entering a tent-like enclosure, we view projected numbers and words intended to merge human experience with the technological. I liked this idea, but lacking the artist's explanation, visitors lose the intention and focus on the aesthetic.
Also challenging is University of South Florida professor Robert Lawrence's wall-hung mixed-media sculpture and video projection. His conceptual component provides Internet addresses instructing viewers to discover "scripts" or short directives and then complete the artist's conceptual performance. These tongue-and-cheek scripts reminded me that Tampa's A. A. Rucci has a local rival in esoteric art production.
Only one work explicitly addresses 9/11. Ringling School of Art professor Andrew Connelly's thoughtful conceptual sculpture incorporates his father's old airline grounds crew jumpsuit (placed under glass) plus text and simple objects. Connelly's respectful reminder reduces the event to a minimalist work reminiscent of conceptualist Charles Ray's sleek tables. For obvious reasons, this piece really deserved a special place of honor rather than the odd angled location in the back gallery.
Three artists touch on the outer periphery of the recent crisis. Carl Cowden III's m/m monoscreenprint, one of his 26-part series, effectively explores human violence through subtle symbolic elements. Robert Sanchez's gelatin silver print photos are intimate portraits of Afghanistan, well before buzzwords like al Qaida permeated the collective psyche. One depicts an intense young man sporting bulging muscles and a Carravaggio-esque face. Shadowy figures and dark tones add to the brooding power.
Contrasting with the immediacy of Sanchez's vision are UT Communications professor Timothy Kennedy's fine classically composed, frozen-in-time images of Rome. Except for digital process, they might have been snapped decades ago.
Linda Berghoff also uses digital photographs, albeit covered with fabric netting and illustrating a hairdo in progress. An obvious twist on the popular theme of identity, it's also one of the hardest pieces in the show to define.
Adolescent and childhood memories are the focus of two Ringling faculty painters. Elizabeth Condon's painting of a claustrophobic, tilted environment with an odd baby and ominous toy monkey is a strong contemporary psychological commentary. Leslie Lerner's beautiful acrylics on canvas revive his "Lost Boy" series, but suggest a historical sensibility that feels like an anomaly at this particular historical moment.
Recent USF grad student Christopher Deacon's two oil pastels on wood address childhood, nostalgia and popular culture. They are far from his strongest work. Deacon recently introduced an innovative technique he calls dremel drawings — he carves into wood with a dremel tool, removing scant surface areas to which he applies stain. He then lights these shallow-boxed images from behind. Had his dremeled "Lifecycle" image been chosen, it might have been one of the more engaging pieces in the show. His recent combination of fascinating film-influenced narratives, dislocation and surreal figurative landscapes make him another young artist to keep an eye on.
After creating the strongest and most obsessively perfect sculpture in our area, USF professor Richard Beckman deserves credit for switching gears. underCURRENT/overVIEW includes his small, organic, animal-like extruded steel sculptures that are metaphors for personal freedom and childhood.
I also like painter Kevin Grass' intelligent visual riddles. His meticulously rendered, realistic oil paintings parody contemporary human and social issues against art historical backdrops. Hugh Barlow's expressionist acrylic paintings come on a bit strong at first, but later viewings reveal this musician/ artist's clever spatial and psychological juxtapositions.
I was most surprised at the choice of USF professor Jeffrey Kronsnoble's small watercolors, which demonstrate his versatility, but not his strengths. I was glad to see his abstractions, but these were hardly his most dynamic works.
Lastly, considering curator Gustafson's focus on recent art, it's hard to fathom why Joyce Ely-Walker's well-executed, soft-toned charcoal landscapes with a 1995 date were included.
So maybe the problem here isn't about art that's in the show; it's about what was left out.
Adrienne M. Golub can be reached by e-mail at adrienne.golub@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2002.
