{"id":25358,"date":"2014-04-03T15:30:42","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T21:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=25358"},"modified":"2018-12-10T15:51:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T21:51:10","slug":"plural-partial-rio-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/plural-partial-rio-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Plural & Partial @ Rio Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rio\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Behind her charming bracelets, Haworth has something edgier to show. \u201cShe Was Not There\u201d and \u201cShe Was Defined by Negative Spaces\u201d comprise a symmetrical pair of mixed-media canvases that make their most telling point through their ambiguity: is this one woman, or two playing similar roles in familiar stories? Every work in\u00a0Plural and Partial<\/em>mixes media in some way: here the artist paints over collaged materials, including newspaper stories of bizarre, resonant violence. The male silhouettes in the background feel ominous, but Haworth\u2019s signature Pop sensibility resurfaces further along, in \u201cArt Woman\u201d and \u201cMiss O. Regrets.\u201d In the latter, a semi-nude torso, animated by images overlaid on transparent layers, sports a bullseye that just might be the barrel of a gun pointed back, recalling that Miss Otis was both victim and perpetrator in her story. Popular songs carry true stories right under the censors\u2019 radar.<\/p>\n

Amy Jorgensen, who draws on the connection between photography and crime\u2014mug shots, crime scenes, evidence documentation, and photos possibly made while breaking the law herself\u2014juxtaposes sexually tinged language with images to ambivalent effect. In \u201cSomething Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue,\u201d the title refers to blue cyanotype copies of \u2018Surveillance Photographs of Militant Suffragettes\u2019 from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, printed on vintage handkerchiefs. In the video \u201cWell Behaved Women,\u201d meanwhile, a digitally fogged female figure whispers Laurel Thatcher Ulrich\u2019s often mis-attributed line\u2014\u2018Well behaved women seldom make history\u2019\u2014while a louder, more insistent voice attempts to mask hers by repeating, \u2018The rain in Spain stays in the plain.\u2019 Elocution lessons trump social truth? But the point is paradoxical: as Jorgensen knows, words whispered in the right ear are far more powerful than those openly spoken.<\/p>\n

Hand-crafted textiles appear among the assembled materials in four of the six bodies of work, including their most stark use by Angela Ellsworth, in \u201cLinda and Eliza.\u201d These tea towels, with their coarse fabric and unfussy red borders, speak of hard wear in utilitarian service. The women\u2019s portraits, stitched in black yarn, recall Veronica\u2019s veil capturing the image of Jesus. Nothing about them is transparent: who these women are, and why one face appears to disintegrate while the other seems stern and remote, may never be known. Instead, those questions will likely go unasked, in shocked or puzzled deference to the lines of yarn that emerge from each face, from the eyes of one but from nowhere in particular on the other, and run as though they might lead to words of explanation, only to puddle on the plinth beneath each portrait. They evoke no obvious or familiar signifier. They may ask where the artist\u2019s line will go now\u2014where she will \u2018draw\u2019 next\u2014but before the mind can ground itself, they produce a feeling as uncanny as a ghost story.<\/p>\n

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Valerie Atkisson\u2019s \u201cHandkerchief Totem\u201d invokes genealogy, a narrow theme on which she displays a wide aesthetic range. In one version of \u201cMatriarchal Line,\u201d laser-cut stainless steel tells a tale of geography and history, sinuously twisting across the wall like a river or a snake, invoking in alternately positive and negative images the migrations underlying so many Utah stories, then winding down to a watercolor finish. \u201cMatriarchal Line\u201d is also the title of a seemingly unfinished sequence of portraits that run halfway across a page, while their penciled emendations continue the rest of the way, violating a basic rule of art to make a point. If history leaves the future open, its lost details also void the past. She knows the names, birthplaces, and dates of many forebears, but not how they looked. Hanging \u201cMatriarchal Line\u201d uses those dry facts in a sculptural exercise: a cloud of labeled triangles resembling a swarm of butterflies replaces the linear family model with a more horizontal, simultaneous view of her extended family.<\/p>\n

Atkisson\u2019s interest in family isn\u2019t strictly historical. In \u201cWeight,\u201d she sketches the living family in three elements arrayed vertically. On the floor sits a bathroom scale, modified to read out the individual names of its users, as though it could sort the family by weighing them. At eye level, a full calendar of events gives a vivid picture of what it takes to organize a modern household\u2019s interlocking schedules. Above the calendar, the clock, its face replaced with one marked in pounds, identifies the true gravity of time.<\/p>\n

So much for the snapshots: works that capture discrete moments. Like Haworth, Liberty Blake and Shawn Rossiter record time in layers laid down like geologic sediments, but their collages also express the passage of time as a narrative existing in space and time. On one wall, the first four panels move \u201cBy Transitions\u201d (so the title tells) three times, building momentum as colors go from black to tan, tan to black, and black to white. Collaged materials lend texture and dramatic passage to blocks of color, occasionally breaking through the surface to create high points along the journey, like viewpoints along a scenic highway. In the second four panels, a crescendo of white equates to a landscape, climaxing with a vertical element bordering on the abyss, beyond which darkness falls. Although their largest work, \u201cMagnificat,\u201d takes its name from one of several encyclopedia pages staggered, seemingly at random, across its middle, the reference to two women, each unable to conceive, rejoicing in their both becoming miraculously pregnant, suggests a reading. Beginning on the left, a series of box-like spaces and claustrophobic, labyrinthine walls release a string of sinuous glyphs that weave around a static mass. Straight lines and sharp angles give way to animated curves and a feeling of escape into an open future.<\/p>\n

Most artists respect gallery conventions: discreet works hang on walls, bordered and bound, and we\u2019re happy they do. The welcome exception comes from Annie Kennedy, whose art foregrounds a process of exploration and discovery, rather than a finished performance that argues, true or not, that the artist was never in danger of losing her way. Kennedy remakes her space into an installation, filled with her distinctive assemblage, which she begins by draping her Mantle across the space between the walls, closing in a private, even a sacred space within the gallery\u2019s larger room. \u2018Mantle\u2019 may be the most complex single language act here, referring to coverings that range from diaphanous and luminous to heavy and concealing, from ones that identify the wearer to those that convey authority. Drawing on her familiar stock of resonant tropes, Kennedy builds her \u201cMantle\u201d from handkerchiefs stained with grape juice, invoking a tent used on a pilgrimage. Inside this portable shrine are two works-in-progress that she intends to continue to rework as her mental and emotional states require. Opposite each other on its walls, one is \u201cBody\u201d and the other is \u201cSpirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes assemblage so powerful, and so appropriate here, is its ability to not just represent, but embody multiple realities. Modern artists who grapple unsuccessfully with concepts like \u2018contemporary\u2019 may not grasp this. Along with its metaphorical resonance as an entryway, an object like the salvaged door that became the picture frame in \u201cSpirit\u201d retains its past identity as a door, even as its single glass panel becomes a picture frame in the present and its burst open body addresses the future as a reliquary. Each assemblage combines salvaged objects chosen for their history, allegorical significance, and visual compression with items fashioned by the artist. Reliefs built up from paper layered like contour models and portable reliquaries made of tins filled with wax mingle with ironic family heirlooms, while paint slathered in thick impastos unifies discordant materials the way a layer of dust might. Or ashes. Her immediate impetus is two life-threatening illnesses, one hers, one her mother\u2019s, that date to the inception of\u00a0Plural & Partial<\/em>. But those challenges do not put her in mind of suffering or danger. Her art celebrates the family story they have both been permitted to carry forward.<\/p>\n

Plural & Partial: Tracing the Intergenerational Self<\/em>, featuring the work of Jann Haworth, Annie Kennedy, Liberty Blake & Shawn Rossiter, Angela Ellsworth, Amy Jorgensen and Valerie Atkisson, is at the\u00a0Rio Gallery<\/a>\u00a0through April 30. A reception for the artists will be held during the April\u00a0Gallery Stroll<\/a>, April 18, 6-9 pm.<\/p>\n

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Behind her charming bracelets, Haworth has something edgier to show. \u201cShe Was Not There\u201d and \u201cShe Was Defined by Negative Spaces\u201d comprise a symmetrical pair of mixed-media canvases that make their most telling point through their ambiguity: is this one woman, or two playing similar roles in familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":25392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[1249,811],"class_list":["post-25358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-laura-hurtado","tag-rio-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/rio1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 20:56:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25358"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41287,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358\/revisions\/41287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}