For
all the conceptual, video, film and performance-based art that nowadays
spills regularly out of university art schools, including the University
of Texas, it might be easy to overlook some of the very strong figurative
work that's percolated in the ivory tower too.
Ditto with the
self-involved navel-gazing that pervades the subject matter of young
art school art -- not everybody's doing it.
Certainly not Zoe
Charlton, Holly Fischer and Edward Monovich, who now share an exhibit
at D. Berman Gallery.
The trio are all
-- or in the case of Fischer will soon be -- products of UT's graduate
art program. And all demonstrate finesse with figuration and smarts
with handling politically charged material.
Charlton has been
impressing for years now with delicately rendered mixed-media drawings
that pack a punch in the way they tackle racial and gender issues.
Currently on the faculty of American University in Washington, D.C.,
she shows -- lucky for us -- regularly in Austin. While Charlton is
still using the same combination of ink, pen and various paints to
portray with expressive strokes her singular stereotypical images
of black women and white men, much of her new work is large -- 5 feet
by 4 feet in some cases. That leaves the viewer no choice -- you must
confront Charlton's scenes, like the nude black woman in "Untitled
(Cape)" who has a cord leading her navel to a tiny sailing ship
that flies in the air like a kite. The woman is still harnessed by
history, in this case, by the specter of a slave ship.
Fischer wrestles
with the gender thing. But she does so in a covert manner, seducing
with the absolute beauty of her life-sized white ceramic sculpture.
Reclining in classic poses, Fischer's sculptures are voluptuous female
torsos. Only they are headless, armless, their lovely shapes ending
in flourishing folds and fluid lines. They can't be taken in from
just one angle -- they tease you around as you try to understand where
they start. They're uncommonly beautiful, to be sure. But they're
jarring in the way they have abstracted the female.
About a year ago,
Monovich, who now lives in the New York City area, stood out in a
group show at Arthouse with his pop-culture-inspired drawing that
questioned recent U.S. military interventions. Why? He's one of the
few young artists who can handle political material without being
didactic or simplistic.
Mixing comic book-like
figures, pop culture icons (Disney's Pinocchio, for example) and precisely
rendered images of toys or animals or tanks, his mixed-media drawings
-- he uses everything from correction fluid to rubber stamps to dry
transfer letters and tape -- all look like busy collages of clip art.
He fills every available space, often using as a background the pixelated
pattern of the brown or green camouflage used by the U.S. military.
The soldier with a monkey's head in "Flex your Mosul" sports
a tattoo that reads Haz Mat (the abbreviation for "hazardous
materials"). In "Friendly Fire," Pinocchio's nose,
wrapped in yellow ribbon that reads "Friendly Fire," grows
longer as he receives a blood transfusion, the blood bag hanging on
a machine gun.
Monovich certainly
doesn't mince his opinions. And though his drawings are fantastically
complex, his message rings loud and clear.
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