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Art

Crafting new definitions of art

"What Next?" In an exhibit that blurs traditional distinctions, the answer could be "The sky's the limit."

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published February 8, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG

"What Next?" at Florida Craftsmen Gallery asks that question and along the way raises more questions than answers in the ongoing debate about craft's relationship to fine art.

And that's good.

Of course, craft can be art, but the prevailing assumption is that fine craft gives at least a nominal nod to functionalism. Yet the one work in this show fitting that criterion seems out of place.

Alejandro Aguilera's White is a chair, though not one you could comfortably sit in, since its back is a bulky carved bust of a man. Still, it is recognizable as a utilitarian object elevated above its purpose by a conceptual component. That's typically what we call fine craft.

So why does it seem anomalous? Because here, among these other works, it's too obvious.

"What Next?" challenges neat categorizations, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, while presenting objects that are without question fine art.

The show is curated by Bernice Steinbaum, a Miami gallery owner with impeccable credentials who represents an enviable roster of artists. She sent some of her best here. Materials associated with craft - clay, metal, wood - are here in abundance. Their treatment blurs distinctions between art and craft.

Consider Maria Brito's two clay sculptures that re-create three-dimensionally Goya's Los Caprichos, a set of prints the Spanish artist made in the 18th century. The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters is the most well known of Los Caprichos, a disturbing self-portrait of the artist, both beset and inspired by his demons. Brito's reinterprets Goya's print. The owls, symbols in the 18th century of mindless stupidities, are still wild-eyed but more benign. Goya's feline is a noble lynx, Brito's a house cat. Hers seems to swipe at modern art's fetishistic appropriation of images.

The association with craft comes in its use of a white polymer clay that looks like bisque and emulates commercial sculptures mass-produced under the guise of "limited editions" that are popular as decorative objects. In this way, it's creating and deconstructing the idea of craft.

Wanxin Zhang offers another variation on this idea of deconstruction. His monumental fired-clay figures are homages to the terra cotta "army" of small soldiers buried with a Qin Dynasty emperor to guard him in the afterlife. He gives new life to those warriors, which now are equal parts ancient and futuristic. Made from slabs of clay, like the leather armor of old, they also look like characters from Bladerunner.

Aguilera's second work in the show, The Walker and his Shadow, fits much better than his chair into this radical visual thesis. Walker's is a schizophrenic treatment, combining meticulously carved wood in the form of a Christ-like head, haloed in a grid of metal, with a rough-hewn body of salvaged wood, sandpaper and cardboard, a mixture of the exquisite and humble.

The humbleness of craft's processes is also seen in Karen Rifas' 12:60, 12 slender polymer tubes stuffed with oak leaves and 60 strands of fiber onto which more leaves are sewn. It's a neat piece, mounted on a turntable the viewer is invited to swivel. It's a lovely while-it-lasts meditation on the passage of time.

If using common materials readily available is a hallmark of craft, then the fly paintings by Elosca and Fabian also qualify. The Cuban artists left their country recently because their subject matter displeased officials, who denied them the necessary credentials to buy art supplies. They turned to what they could find; presumably, flies were in abundance. Two meticulous paintings are created from the pulverized insects (in that state they look like brown paint, by the way) with only a few intact bodies alluding to the medium's provenance. Ick factor aside, they're witty. But despite the anecdotal interest of the back story and technical proficiency of the work, I have a hard time justifying their inclusion. Regardless of how the artists made them, they're paintings, not craft.

The same argument can be made for My Life as a Tree, Edouard Duval-Carrie's enormous autobiographic work of painted resin on six aluminum panels. It's a tree, folk-art style, hung and overlaid with personal and historical mementos. Craft? No. But it's so gorgeous, I can only be grateful for its inclusion.

That ambivalence is the point of this show. These and other works are meant to provoke. Let the dialogue remain so open.

Review

"What Next?"

Florida Craftsmen Gallery, 501 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, through March 2. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Free admission. (727) 821-7391 or www.floridacraftsmen.net.

[Last modified February 7, 2007, 08:57:12]