Two new takes on packaging are in the bag

Jonathan Seliger and Yuken Teruya deliver messages in 'GDP' exhibit

By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent  |  July 30, 2008

Packaging fuels the buyer's self-image. Nine-year-old boys usually respond to whiz-bang colors and knock-'em, sock-'em images. Newbury Street shoppers prefer elegant and understated packages, such as an ivory Prada bag with the store's distinguished but understated logo printed on the side.

The Cartin Collection, a private collection that has been staging exhibitions at Ars Libri this year organized by Steven Holmes, offers a small summer show, "GDP: Gross Domestic Product," in which Jonathan Seliger and Yuken Teruya parse and skewer packaging.

Seliger paints Prada, Victoria's Secret, Tiffany, and Henri Bendel logos on canvas, which he then meticulously folds into a bag shape. They look even better than the real thing, because the flawless texture of his paint on canvas gives them a calf's-skin sheen. That ratchets up the package's already carefully devised ability to seduce, as does the fact that this is no mass-produced paper bag; it's a handmade art object that cleverly straddles the divide between painting and sculpture. Look closely at it, and you may feel covetousness pumping through your veins. To think, this only represents the package, merely an accessory to what's inside.

"Dear Odette," which Seliger titles the Prada bag, evokes Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" and the protagonist Swann's reveries of the beautiful, stylish woman he ultimately marries. The title adds another layer to the dream of wanting that most of us live in. As of last week, Holmes had fallen down on the job, failing to provide labels or even a title list for this show ("Dear Odette" shows up in the press materials). It's a pity; it seems Seliger's titles don't merely describe the work, but expand upon it.

Teruya takes a green tack. Regular gallery-goers will know him: He has shown pieces from this series in the Boston area twice already in the past year. Teruya uses actual shopping bags - from McDonalds to Tiffany - and delicately cuts the forms of trees out of the logos on the sides, reminding the viewer of where the paper pulp for the bags came from. He folds his cutouts into the bags, so you peer inside and find not a hamburger, or a bracelet, but a tiny paper tree.

Several are on display here, though we know the title only of the Tiffany bag, "Notice-Forest (Tiffany & Co.)." Light pours in through the cuts to create markedly theatrical lighting within the bags; the trees seem to have halos. Seliger and Teruya make a solid, witty pair, but this show should have been better planned and executed.

Small space, big potential

Summer seems to have become the season for exhibiting young artists. This past week, "Nascent" opened. It's a small exhibit put together by James Manning, a curator who has long taken an interest in emerging artists, at the New England School of Art and Design Gallery at Suffolk University.

Thematically, the works have nothing to do with one another, although Manning valiantly suggests that all examine perceptions of reality - what artist doesn't? The treat is in seeing new work by unknowns, and all five show promise.

Lizzy Martinez's dark painting "Busted" shows a young woman on a stainless steel table, starkly performing open-heart surgery on herself. The painting would be melodramatic if it weren't so coolly clinical. Cathleen Faubert's surreal photos of a young woman floating above, then crash landing on a bed covered with cotton candy are haunting, sweet but weirdly hallucinatory. Every year, another young artist seems to be making videos or photographs about flying or falling; Faubert gives the eternal theme a twisted kick.

Pete Froslie's multi-platform project attempts to launch a popular-culture figure, a game avatar based on John Wilkes Booth who will act and morph based on the whims of those who play the game. That would be the real art, I think; the accessories, including artwork, toys, and a handbook, although fun, feel static without a community of people animating them.

Video installation artist Georgie Friedman needs more space for her work; here, she gets a corner to project her disjointed seascapes onto. The seas in "Seas and Skies" rush and heave deliriously, the skies move sedately, and the horizon line never changes, despite the rising and falling waves. It's deliciously disorienting, but I'd prefer to be surrounded by it, rather than have it tucked in a corner.

Mike Farley's "Hippocampus fuscus" cutouts spiral up the wall and over the entry to a hall, like ivy. He paints in acrylic on the day-glo paper; its wild colors reflect off the wall it rests on. The painting suggests pods, vines, and the occasional bizarre critter. It's expertly made, but like Friedman's video, would be more effective on a larger scale. Manning only had so much space to work with, though, and he's to be applauded for giving these artists a showcase.