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Art

Primal passions

Artist Renee Stout references African tradition and the human condition in her richly textured works, on exhibit in St. Petersburg.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published April 30, 2006

	[Images from the Arts Center]
	Renee Stout, Scream at 42, 2001, acrylic and oil on board.
	Renee Stout, Conjuring Vest (part of the installation Madam Ching’s Parlor), 1996, mixed media.
	Renee Stout, The All Soul’s House of Prayer, 2000, mixed media.

At some point in advancing age, with so much behind us and who-knows-how-much-longer left, we might want to let rip a full-throated scream about nothing in particular and everything in general. Few of us actually do it - what would the dogs and neighbors think? - and fewer still would have the guts to record it for posterity.

Renee Stout yells for all of us.

We can't hear her, of course, but Scream at 42 still pulses with imagined sound waves.

The Arts Center practically overflows with such vibrations from "Church of the Crossroads," an exhibition with more than 60 works by Stout, mostly mixed media, including two installations. I can't remember such a commitment to one artist at the center, where the show fills its four main galleries.

The show is also unusual in that the center almost always exhibits work it can sell; this collection is on loan from a family foundation and is not for sale, making it more like a museum exhibition.

It's certainly museum quality. Its central theme is the crossroads, that place either literal or metaphorical that demands choices from us. In African culture, it is a symbol of the convergence of the supernatural and natural worlds, the visible and invisible, good and evil.

Much of Stout's work pays tribute to the "found" constructions of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg; one is subtitled A Heart to Heart With Basquiat, who also worked in that genre. But Stout goes those masters of recycling one better, often creating objects that only resemble detritus, an act of legerdemain both skillful and relevant to her themes.

And unlike Marcel Duchamp, who used salvaged materials with a certain cynical bravado, Stout's trompe l'oeil bottles and advertising posters are earnest explorations of alter egos and imagined scenarios. To create an escapist fantasy, the props should be fantasized, too.

So you enter Stout's installation Roots Store and feel rather than see its proprietor, the conjurer Fatima Mayfield, modeled on Oya , the Yoruba warrior goddess, a symbol of independence and strength. "I Can Heal," proclaims a neon sign; "Whatever your problem - I can help," says the scrawled caption below a jar of Jinx Killer Bath. A table is stocked with jars and bottles that look old but are mostly hand-blown and one of a kind, along with candles, incense and mysterious constructions by Stout that are part of Fatima's stock in trade. This and much of her art layers references to voodoo, hoodoo and African healing traditions.

That same amalgam, along with storytelling, another African tradition, informs her mixed media works and paintings, many deftly photorealistic, with narratives and journal entries written on the surfaces. She blends the inner-city dichotomy of violence and spirituality in a group of works dealing with her years in Washington, D.C. In another group, she invokes Ogun, a Yoruba deity, in exploring both political themes and her relationship with her father.

People like me, not steeped in the rituals and beliefs of African-based culture, can't fully appreciate the referential richness of Stout's art. It's like standing at a crossroads, unsure of our exact destination but knowing we're going places.

Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com.

Review

"Church of the Crossroads" is at the Arts Center,719 Central Ave.,St. Petersburg, through May 28. Hours are 10 a.m.to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Free admission. (727) 822-7872 or www.theartscenter.org.

[Last modified April 28, 2006, 11:41:11]