Revealing creative nature
PROVIDENCE -- Artists have always tried to capture the sublime beauty of nature. In the airy, lovely summer show "Natured Anew: reflections of the natural world," at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, five contemporary artists approach the topic through patterns and repetition, which are of course the building blocks of nature itself.
Painter Barbara Takenaga's lush canvases could depict microbes or cosmic events: they're vast, unfurling patterns that appear to expand and contract before your eyes. Takenaga, who had work in the DeCordova Museum's recent exhibit "Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century," has a technique of obsessive mark-making. In "Angel," a cascade of gold and white orbs encased in pods , those forms run up and down the scale from pin head-size to two inches in diameter, accruing into a swirling, vertiginous rush. It's Op-Art gone organic.
A similar pod shape appears in Doug Bosch's sculpture "Chandelier/Swarm." As if he was making a tapered candle, Bosch dipped 5,400 strings repeatedly into pollen, slowly accumulating bulbous pods at the ends. He hangs the vast cluster of them from the ceiling; looking up into them is like gazing into the face of a giant, brown-sugar coated chrysanthemum. As with Takenaga, the sheer power of repetition ultimately drives Bosch's work to a bizarre beauty.
Bruce Chao makes his sculpture in the woods; it's merely documented here, but it looks magical, like the handiwork of elves. Chao builds a precarious-looking suspension bridge into the forest canopy on private land in Seekonk ("Synapse" ), then, outfitted in a safety harness and hardhat, walks along it. "Aether" has a more mystical slant: A great ball woven with intertwined stripped saplings, it sits near the top of a 70-foot tall wild oak tree.
I've seen Neeta Madahar 's "Falling" video installation and photos of spiraling sycamore seeds before, and they continue to enchant. In the video, an empty sky slowly fills with dozens of seeds whirling lazily through the air. The work marvels at the propeller-like flight of the seeds, and the beauty of their whirligig trajectory against the blue sky.
A more sardonic vision arises in the sculptures of Brian Burkhardt, who offers works different than those he showed at Judi Rotenberg Gallery in the spring. Burkhardt examines humanity's impact on nature, and he describes nature's desperate efforts to adapt. The cleverly made "U.S. D.O.T. Butterflies," takes on the colors of a variety of license plates. The graphics blur and distort into patterns you wouldn't be surprised to find on a butterfly. He's assembled dozens of butterflies pinned to the wall, as an eye-catching, unnerving collection.
There are two kinds of art about nature: the awestruck art, which most of this is , and art that examines humanity's troubling relationship to nature. Burkhardt's inclusion here seems like a token gesture , a nod to issues of climate change and genetic manipulation, but it strikes an odd note amid the reverie. The show did not need to be political; the idylls that appear in "Natured Anew" make it clear enough that the earth is a precious place.
Cathy Lees paints disturbing narratives in crisp interiors that always include self-portraits and often use exaggerated perspective. Usually, we see Lees lying sprawled or crumpled in big, sterile-seeming rooms. In "Bedroom Laundry ," glimpsed through a closet doorway, a man undresses a woman on the bed. But over to the side and reflected in the closet door's mirror there's a plastic laundry basket with a young woman -- Lees -- in it, her limbs splaying out like a rag doll's.
You can't miss Lees in "Broken Eggs." She's falling head first out of the refrigerator, eggs spilled and cracked on the kitchen floor all around her. Lees paints these with vivid intensity, matching the perfection of her spaces and technique with a sense of internal mess or woundedness shown in the self-portraits. They are chilling and funny.
It will come as no surprise that Crislin Meshberg studied with Emily Eveleth at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Eveleth is known for her large-scale paintings of plump, seductive doughnuts. Meshberg uses a hotter palette and a juicier subject: pomegranates. Their glossy red seeds spill out against a jarring aqua background in "Rupture," a lusciously painted meditation on desire.
Erin Raedeke paints quieter, brushy scenes of small - town life (she lives in West Virginia). Well executed, they're predictable until she takes you off the charming street and into her studio. "Interior With Fake Flowers" bristles with patterns that add to the disruptive blur of her brushstroke; the whole painting, littered with the detritus of a child's birthday party but empty of people, has a pleasing buzz.
Sculptor Lydia Musco, from Boston University, is an unlikely choice for this painting gallery. The floor wouldn't support her impressive larger works. Still, you can get a taste of Musco's aesthetic with several studies. "Stack Study III" shows a pile of fat concrete wedges, voluptuously pressing into one another like luncheon meat in a Dagwood sandwich.
Natured Anew: reflections of the natural world
At: David Winton Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, 64 College St., Providence, through July 8. 401-863-2932. www.brown.edu/bellgallery
New Talent
At: Alpha Gallery, 38 Newbury St., through June 30. 617-536-4465. www.alphagallery.com 