The two exhibits now at the Weston Art Gallery mine feelings of mistrust as the world turns more chaotic every day. The logic of marketing suggests we should feel more connected than ever because of social media, mass-produced home décor and similar-looking malls and subdivisions. Yet we’re strangers in a familiar land — and some of us are growing a bit paranoid.
In the street-level installation of Soft Regards, a vinyl triptych unrolls onto the floor, weighted by artificial rocks that double as speakers. Most of us have driven by the kind of site being evoked here by those banners — a crumbling lot with a construction trailer and a sign pointing to new homes that all look alike. But lingering before such a barren spot without spying (on) any of the new neighbors feels disorienting. And those rocks are emitting strange sounds — yoga breathing interspersed with excerpts from Rosemary’s Baby and Alien.
Accompanying posters urge us to “mother and destroy,” “refuse to normalize,” “stay with the trouble” and “go off screen.” Other prints include instructions for making a gas mask, disposing of a body and erasing one’s digital trail. If you think you’re going to need more muscle, there is a web of resistance bands along the stairway to the lower galleries.
Downstairs, an anxiety-themed reading room known as the Paranoid Library is lined with titles including The Naked and the Dead, Women Who Love Too Much, Psychic Self-Defense and 100 Deadly Skills.
In a talk at the Weston, Soft Regards artists Elena Harvey Collins and Liz Roberts explained that their interest in landscape, survivalist culture and self-improvement stem from enduring multiple moves. The collaborators met three years ago as students at Ohio’s Columbus College of Art and Design. Collins, who is British, now works in California, while Roberts resides in Columbus.
Their art “hijacks” the language of self-help manuals and yoga tutorials to restore individuality as well as community and perhaps prevent fearful folks from withdrawing from the world. (The exhibition title Soft Regards is part of a longer phrase that uses “regards” as a verb: “Soft regards hard with envy,” from a tongue-in-cheek yoga video they previously made.)
Their concept would not work without some humor. That comes in a short video — and behind-the-scenes storyboard — in which they adapt survivalist tips from a former Navy SEAL for a feminist/feminine lifestyle. On a hot California day and in view of a “new homes” sign, the two women build their own body armor after a Home Depot trip with their children for bullet-resistant ceramic tile. Collins tapes her purchase around a copy of Womancare: A Gynecological Guide to Your Body. It’s perfect, and perfectly ridiculous.
Soft Regards is paired with Walls, Windows, Rooms, People by George Rush. The Ohio State University art professor has transformed one of the Weston’s galleries into a home interior, with line drawings of curtains, baseboards and windows that frame colorful painted scenes filled with plants, furniture and his family. Stepping into this bright, open installation is refreshing after the physical and psychological darkness of Soft Regards. But it’s not long before we realize that “private spaces have been turned inside out,” as Rush puts it in his artist statement.
Like Roberts and Collins in their armor, Rush’s painted subjects also appear simultaneously protected and vulnerable, even inside the home he’s constructed for them. His bright patterns mimic camouflage, but we still notice the people in their underwear. Maybe they, and we, all need to take a page not from Collins and Roberts’ Paranoid Library, but from a confident child who was playing around the space at the opening, knowing she was safe and unthreatened.
“I’ve perfected the art of sliding in here unnoticed,” the youngster announced to other preteens, after skidding through the library’s doorway untouched and into a pillow on the floor.
It’s never too early to recognize that we each have the skills to make our way through the world.
SOFT REGARDS and WALLS, WINDOWS, ROOMS, PEOPLE continue through Jan. 29. Gallery talk with George Rush 7 p.m. Jan. 10. More info: westonartgallery.com.
This article appears in Dec 14-21, 2016.
