1/28/2010 - West Side Leader
By Roger Durbin
DOWNTOWN AKRON — Contemporary works of art is certainly an apt description of the current Akron Art Museum (AAM) exhibit Pattern ID, which is on display through May 9.
Of the 40 works by 15 international artists, only two date from the 1990s. A majority of the remaining works on display were created within the past five years. The exhibit includes painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media and video by the artists who manipulate pattern and dress to define as well as expand their cultural identities, according to museum officials.
The exhibit is ground breaking and reflects a recent movement in art, according to Ellen Randolph, the AAM’s curator of exhibitions. She said the artists use “pattern and dress to talk about their identity.” In a way, each work “sort of tells a story,” she said, meaning the artists use emblems or influences of their experience as a means to explain how they see the world, how cultural traditions shape their art or how they may fuse images to embody how they see themselves in the larger world. In short, it is highly “autobiographical,” Randolph said.
The rather loosely constructed thematic arrangement of the exhibition helps to guide viewers through the process of understanding. Different galleries represent “Views of Beauty and Femininity,” “Mapping Cultural Heritage,” “Performing Identity” and “New Twists of Art History.” Works from each of the 15 contributing artists actually appear in various galleries — the works chosen by Randolph used to explain an aspect of this contemporary movement.
As an example, the works in the room titled “Performing Identity” demonstrate just how individual, private and far-reaching is the span of this hybrid, yet unique art form. On one wall are two works by James Gobel that depict two bearded men dressed in flannel shirts, suspenders and jeans fitting slender women in high fashion clothing. Called “The Fitting No. 1” and “The Fitting No. 2,” the works illustrate in felt, yarn and acrylic on canvas two “bears” (the scope name for generally burly, hairy gay men) that are in real life fashion designers and are “performing” their professional work.
No less unusual and striking are other works in the room done by Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi. A native of Morocco who lives equally in New York City, Essaydi tries to fit images of women as depicted in western art tradition with cultural dress patterns and her own notions of what the merger means. In one work, “Les Femmes du Maroc,” three women are fully covered (from head to foot, including the face) in burqa-style clothing. In another, a Muslim woman is shown very much as the famed nude by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres called “The Grand Odalisque.” In Essaydi’s work, “Les Femmes du Maroc: Grande Odalisque,” the woman is in the same position, but is covered more modestly. All the works by Essaydi have handwritten notes by the artist in Arabic script covering every inch of the canvas, to include the figure represented, as a means to demonstrate how she became the result of two seemingly disparate traditions.
Not all works are two-dimensional. In the gallery on “New Twists on Art History,” Yinka Shonibare, a British-born artist of African ancestry, has a sculptural work called “Three Graces,” which re-interprets this “new twists” idea that has been well represented in art. In her case, however, Shonibare clads the fiberglass mannequins in Dutch wax printed cotton. The costumes on the life-sized figures appear to be starchy and Victorian but are in highly colored patterns that would be expected on equatorial African women.
All the pieces, said Randolph, underline the notion of our seemingly fragmented yet global world experience. People may be born in “one country,” she said, “or in another part of a country,” yet emigrate and enter into a different cultural (or in some cases subcultural) tradition, and then search for ways to incorporate or explain themselves in terms of their new, sometimes disparate, often fused environment. Whatever, it makes for incredibly interesting, evocative and perhaps provocative works of art.
There are many programs associated with the exhibit. For more details, visit www.AkronArtMuseum.org. The AAM is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Adult general admission is $7 and $5 for students and seniors. AAM members and children younger than 12 are admitted for free. Special exhibitions may require paid admission. Allow about an hour and a half for this exhibition. For more information, call (330) 376-9185 or visit the Web site.
Roger Durbin is professor emeritus of bibliography at The University of Akron and an avid art enthusiast. To contact him, e-mail r.durbin@sbcglobal.net.
