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Arts
Review Hillevi
Barr and Beverly Penn |
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Contemporary art struggles to understand the role of nature in our postindustrial, pre-posttechnological era—an age in which we keep our heads spinning with the latest tunes on our iPods and take pictures of friends with our mobile telephones. Simple plants now seem more alien to us than cell towers, their stamens and pistils peculiar and otherworldly. Television characters are, on the other hand, first-name familiar. Last fall, d berman gallery exhibited works by Beverly Penn and Hillevi Barr that elaborate on—or are inspired by—the natural world. The work was mounted in a fashion that bisected the gallery, Barr with her filmy sculptures and Penn with her weighty ones. Barr’s elegant concoctions are made of lightweight Mylar; Penn’s deceptively realistic floral pieces are actually cast metal. The presentation was a bit like rock/paper/scissors because both of these artists can transform media into things that appear to have more weight—or less—through skillful craftsmanship and tricks of light. As a metalsmith, Beverly Penn displays exceptional skill; her twigs are jewellike, reflecting the precision of a master craftsman in works modeled directly from nature. In a simple series, elaborate metal plates or wheels act as frames or bases, displaying works of cast seedpods and flower heads. Their colors ranging from delicate to brazen, these works are cleverly cast and deceptively “real.” Just as in nature, each element is unique; each faux twig represents a true one, found and cast by the artist. Playful pieces expand on the theme of nature, introducing man, science and, ultimately, philosophy. Family Tree is built around plants culled from Penn’s garden. She connects the elements, creating the allusion of a system, suggesting that scientific and biological relationships might exist, validated through the addition of metal pins and barcodes. In the
elegant, emotionally rich piece 12 Months Time, a glass bar holds
tiny cast twigs of nandina, each branch revealing a progressive transformation.
The humble plant eloquently records the passage of time—a record as
painstakingly detailed as if it were a human life. The lighting at
d berman emphasizes shadows that repeat and overlay, adding a richness
and depth that would be lost if the work were more harshly lit.
Beverly Penn, Twelve Months Tiimes
(Nanadina), 2004 Whether implicit in her philosophical or technological references—or simply strewn across the wall like a forgotten bouquet—Penn’s works depend on botanical elements foraged from the real world. Hillevi Barr’s work, in contrast, is more an interpretation of natural impulses and movement than a direct use of natural image and form. Barr’s remarkable Orange Pop is almost entirely composed of tricks of light. As it is installed at d berman, the piece benefits from shadow. The work is unnervingly simple—a splash of orange painted on the wall, a series of arched wires holding tiny Mylar circles...simple, huh? But the effect is playful, original and thoroughly captivating, as is Barr’s Expanding Drawing. The work invites us into a state of childlike wonder, indulging in our curiosity. Petallike links of Mylar look like gift-wrap or printed vellum, but actually the piece is a long painting, cut into craft-paper links and connected like a preschooler’s daisy chain. Barr’s floral motif on Mylar works with the flow of the paper, suggesting movement. It forms an arabesque, fastened by long steel pins with beaded terminals. The vellumlike translucence of Mylar—as well as the shadows made by angles of light—combine to transform the work into jewelry, like a necklace for the wall. Barr’s materials are elegant and straightforward—even old-fashioned—but they function as a utility to transfer the vision of the artist, not as the dominant factor in her artmaking process. Using the same tools, she reinvents the results in Dutch Pattern, Red Swirl and Arabesque—three panels made of hundreds of tiny, suspended sections of a painting. Together they read like puzzle pieces pulled apart from a greater whole and reassembled. The work echoes pointillism with a twist: while reconstructing each painting, Barr utilizes pushpins to raise and lower each section, creating waves of patterns that delight and intrigue. This added dimension allows surface designs to change character as the viewer moves in relation to the work. Many of
Barr’s works have an implicit floral motif, executed like the surface
designs one might find in textile or ceramic wares. In the most direct
“flora” of the show, the spectacular Weeping Willow, Barr utilized
long, leafy branches of metal which drip from the wall in cascades
of Mylar leaves, elegant and pure. Perfect lighting creates shadows
that invite us into a simulated forest.
Hillevi Barr, Weeping Willow (detail),
2004 In an era of complex materials and overborne statements, Barr’s simplicity is refreshing. Like a genius child let loose with paper, pins and library paste, she constructs works that are diverse but deeply satisfying. Art’s first application was to define man’s response to his surroundings—to comment on and in some ways reinterpret nature. Plants and animals made their way onto cave walls and then canvas, have been dutifully woven into tapestries and carved onto temple walls. Barr and Penn continue to prove that even contemporary artists can find something new to reveal in the primal relationship with nature—a relationship that was our first mode of high expression and will doubtlessly be our last.
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