On the Weston Art Gallery’s street level, Cincinnati native and New York-based artist Todd Pavlisko presents ornately carved violins that appear to be melting over basketballs. But let’s consider the symbolism of this soft collision: basketballs and violins are each loaded with cultural meaning. A wall text tells me Pavlisko is interested in “a confluence of high and popular media.” That’s a fairly problematic thing to say, given its inferences. Can we give this artist the benefit of the doubt?
Vintage NBA posters are framed on a nearby wall. Athletes’ bodies are covered by photographs by inventor Harold Edgerton, who pioneered a method to capture extremely fast things like bullets flying through the air. There are striking similarities between the paired images, like a water droplet that looks like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reaching for a slam dunk.
But the fact that this white artist has covered black bodies with photos of objects is inescapable. His intent seems to have been for Edgerton’s photographs to act as windows through which we can see athletes as beautiful forms and the passage of time writ with the drama of a slam dunk.
But maybe Pavlisko could have explored other ways of saying this?
Instead, we have a white artist inviting us to aestheticize black bodies by comparing them to objects. In doing so, he objectifies those bodies and coerces the viewer into complicity.
Spanning both gallery levels, the work comes across as desperate to be taken seriously. The artist (who once nailed his own foot to a gallery floor) asks us to trust that it has meaning. The work does have meaning, it just doesn’t mean what he says it does.
Todd Pavlisko: Pop Supernatural, is scheduled to run through April 5 at the Weston Art Gallery, which is currently closed until further notice. More info:
This article appears in Best Of Cincinnati 2020 (12098053).
