The opening of a new show can be a tense, contentious time for an artist. Doubts arise: “What do the public and critics think? Does this show really work?”
But at the Contemporary Arts Center’s recent opening of her show by every wind that blows, Diane Landry was above all that. Literally.
In the museum’s first-floor lobby, she was “rowing” a canoe in the air, suspended from the ceiling via wires with a plastic sheet below her boat. The crowd watched, photographed and mingled below her. But Landry, up in the air, didn’t look down on folks; that would have a negative connotation. Rather, she just moved through the air with the greatest of ease, confidently making imaginary waves.
As a performance, it was an icebreaker for her new show in an upstairs gallery. “Icebreaker,” actually, is what she calls a similar performance that was video-recorded and plays on a gallery screen.
The engaging show mostly features the Canadian artist’s graceful use of existing, repurposed everyday objects, some of which have been mechanized. There is also a video component.
The CAC show is co-curated by Raphaela Platow, its director/chief-curator, and Steven Matijcio, its new curator who also interviewed Landry for the catalog of her current, larger exhibition at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, N.C.
Landry is also represented by Carl Solway Gallery here, and two of this show’s pieces — both “Mandalas” — showed there recently. It’s good to have them in a museum setting, where more people can see and admire them.
“Mandala Perrier” consists of green Perrier plastic bottles attached to a white plastic laundry basket with holes in it for grasping. It is attached to a swing-out metal arm with a light on it. A motor allows the parts to move, and the shadows they create on the wall have a kaleidoscopic effect. It isn’t maybe the religious experience that a traditional mandala is, but it pleases.
The gallery piece that attracts the most attention is “Exhaustion.” From a distance, as you approach it, it appears to be a gigantic wire-mesh basket from the world’s weirdest playground — something where you fire a ball into it with a cannon. A closer look shows the material to be criss-crossed patterns of plastic cutlery that gleam with light.
This gives the viewer the opportunity to look at and think about such cutlery without having to consider their use. These items are, essentially, pure art in this setting. And that’s liberating.
But there’s more. Once the motor is running (and it took a little tinkering on opening night), the whole basket (or chandelier, if you prefer) starts to descend in sagging motions, lower and lower like a person doing a limbo. Or suffering from exhaustion. Watching it, you succumb to its rhythms of movement. You start to drop down with it.
There was a video piece I found myself impatient with, “A Radio Silence,” which features Landry. But otherwise, this is a show that rewards your time with it.
When I describe how her mechanized pieces work, it sounds Rube Goldberg-like — needlessly complicated, quaint, even belabored.
But the actuality is far from that. Each work has a transforming impact that eventually is uplifting. What Landry is doing with plastic detritus — the junk that clogs our landfills and accumulates in our waters — borders on miraculous. It gives us hope of clawing our way out of our junk culture yet.
Joey Versoza and Pop Culture
If Landry’s work with existing materials is done with economy, the show in an adjoining gallery — Is This It by Cincinnati artist Joey Versoza, curated by Justine Ludwig — has a helter-skelter approach to using whatever he wants to use.
I’d be hard put to explain why all the party balloons festoon the video clips in “This Is It,” or why the music that accompanies the images is what it is. The show’s title refers to the This Is It comeback concerts Michael Jackson was planning before he died in 2009.
And while “Fans of Kurt Cobain” seems a little easy and obvious — a phalanx of room fans and some flannel shirts hanging from a chandelier — it’s also touching when you think of how quickly time has passed since flannel-loving grunge (and Cobain) mattered to culture.
Versoza is on to something — how we remember pop culture highpoints after they pass — that feels meaningful but still is being shaped. That’s exciting.
Is This It is up through Feb. 2, 2014; by every wind that blows is at CAC until March 2, 2014. More at contemporaryartscenter.org.
CONTACT STEVEN ROSEN :
srosen@citybeat.com
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2013.