Look Now Look = All Around: At the Maryland State Arts Council through June 13

4= /2/2008=20

[0]

Art=20 | Visual Arts

Bearing Witness =
Compact, Heady Show Riffs On The Citywide Cartography=20 Festival

FEELING = GRAVITY'S PULL: Anna=20 Fine Foer's "Magnetism--Rebecca At The Well."

Look Now Look All Around
At the = Maryland=20 State Arts Council through June 13
A=20 reception for Look Now All Around is scheduled for 5-8 p.m., = April=20 17.

By Deborah=20 McLeod

As a parry to the Walters Art Museum's = exhibition=20 of historical maps, the Maryland State Arts Council has mounted an = elusive=20 little show along its warren of hallways in South Baltimore, revealing = that=20 mapping is as much an unseen and ongoing process as an influential = document for=20 all times. Look Now Look All Around was curated by Dawn Gavin, = herself an=20 artist who works with maps as source material. The show's title has a = paranoid=20 tinge to it, and in fact Look Now's underlying premise conveys a = shadowy=20 apprehension of being deceived by a map's presumed certainty. To prove = that=20 there is much going on beyond a map's route numbers and color codes of = streets,=20 12 artists express new destinations, observations, and orientations.

The exhibition introduces itself with Julie Jankowski's epic = repainting of a=20 satellite shot of North America captured on Aug. 14, 2003, the date the=20 Northeast corridor experienced a massive blackout that, in essence, sent = New=20 York, New Jersey, and parts of Michigan and Ontario into extinction. = Like taking=20 a bite of Alice's eat me cake, Jankowski's God's-eye-view painting = strips=20 viewers of their reliance on scale, landmark, boundary, and = infrastructure to=20 reorient them to the exhibition's reality.

That accomplished, Beverly Ress' "Jay/Torus" transforms negative to = positive=20 space by cutting away a double-comb shape from a map's two-dimensional = paper=20 plane and coiling it into a skeletal three-dimensional tubular circle. A = found=20 dead blue jay--a succinct rendering of one, at least--initiates this = geometric=20 hocus-pocus. Afloat in a void of presumed unconsciousness, it functions = as the=20 source of the cut-away paper that rolls forward, ultimately to form the = torus.=20 This uniquely supernatural work was in another area show in the last = year or so,=20 and it endowed each exhibition with its infinite profundity and = mathematical=20 caper: "Jay/Torus" simplifies the complicated and complicates the = simple. In=20 limitless ways, it is about rebirth or the cycles of existence and the=20 interchanging relationships of all matter. But for this show Ress' piece = is, to=20 pull from Gavin's curatorial statement, "a theoretical topological model = of the=20 universe."

Ress' blue jay offers a transitional segue to Tim Horjus' dot = matrices and=20 electronic-beam traffic jams. Horjus envisions atomic space from = different=20 perspectives. He paints it as colorful intersecting rays scanning the = realm like=20 prison searchlights, or collages it as organized dot-filled planes that = order=20 and record contact points or photons. As collages rather than paintings, = these=20 works suggest the dots more as a temporary visitation. Horjus = extrapolates his=20 titles from the letter/number formulas that spammers use to wiggle = though=20 computer spyware in an attempt to sell pharmaceuticals, etc.

Susan Main's video, "Glass/Sky (Fly)," shares some of the same = transitory=20 condition of documenting seemingly empty space. Her interloper to the = unblank=20 page is a fly. It periodically materializes and evaporates before her = camera=20 lens as she trains it on a lawn on a sunny, still day. Nothing appears = to happen=20 at first, and time assumes the infinite quality it disingenuously = promises a=20 child. As the blades of grass barely ruffle, a sense of warm, comforting = boredom=20 settles in--and it is just about then when the fuzzy, black, = out-of-focus=20 splotch whooshes by, bringing with it age, annoyance, dark humor, and = the=20 prescience of rot sticking to the fine hairs on its legs.

Foon Sham and Anna Fine Foer employ a form of reverse big bang in = approaching=20 their complex symbolic compositions. Both artists summon ideas of = receptivity,=20 the returning home of lost aspects to be welcomed back to an inner fold, = restoring and revising it. Sham nests triangular wood shapes, to which = map=20 sections have been judiciously applied, to some outermost surfaces; Foer = works=20 with cutup map papers but also on occasion with collaged images of = magnets. Each=20 artist meticulously and brilliantly reintegrates his and her imagined = worlds=20 from these prodigal shards to construct a new hierarchy, one of = aspiration,=20 magnetic pull, and reunification.

Two of the show's artists map human existence by capturing snippets = of=20 conversation. Emily Hunter's spontaneous little journal pages in = "Dialogue Maps"=20 route fragmentary conversations as Apollinaire-style meanderings in pale = red=20 ink. Her penmanship is so tiny and secret-keeping that it takes a highly = observant passer-by to eavesdrop on it. Brian Garner also fragments the=20 subjectively iffy process of asking and receiving directions. The = earphones that=20 provide these overheard experiences hang on the wall casually, = disinterested in=20 being of particular use, not unlike the unsuspecting targets of a = bewildered=20 stranger just before their directional advice is required.

Jefferson Pinder also charts human existence, but from another = vantage point.=20 He diagrams the cargo arrangement of sailing ships. Like Hunter's faint = writings=20 that appear at first to be nothing more than undulating lines, his=20 horseshoe-shaped designs first seem like an interesting pattern, an = effect=20 Pinder accentuates by collaging the repeated image into a wall hanging, = an=20 earth-colored textile reminiscent of a mud-cloth quilt. Closer = inspection=20 reveals that the pattern is in fact countless, nameless little tightly = amassed=20 figures ringing a slave ship's hold. Pinder expresses journey, in this = work and=20 in his video, as an experience of burden, binding, and blindness, not = just for=20 the traveler but for all his fellow sightseers as well.

Look Now Look All Around offers a 360-degree view of a living = in the=20 form of map, a chronicle of mindful acuity. It's a surprisingly = extensive and=20 seamless collection of works that fill the narrow angling walls of the = James=20 Backas Gallery without crowding its space in the least. = H

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