October 7-13, 2004

art

Forest for the Trees

Laura Owens, in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop, Untitled (2003), 69 1/2 inches by 50 inches, hand embroidery and silk-screen print on tussah silk.

One artist's ho-hum dendrological works might lead viewers to be rewarded elsewhere.

by Robin Rice

Laura Owens, a 33-year-old painter from Los Angeles, has been credited with substantial responsibility for the "rebirth of painting." Never mind that reports of painting's demise have been greatly exaggerated, Owens, who recently completed a residency at the Fabric Workshop, is "the most important painter to emerge in Southern California in the '90s." That's if you believe Paul Schimmel, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and a bellwether in the world of contemporary painting. He will talk about Owens' work next month at the FWM.

Owens' suite of seven silk-screened and hand-embroidered vaguely Oriental tree images is already on display. Each flat, almost leafless tree clings to peacock-blue-and-green crags. Gawky, anorexic branches suggest the work of animator Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli), melded perhaps with a bargain-price greeting card (not for those who "care enough to send the very best"). There are hints of feeling but the cumulative effect is stolid ambiguity. Slender proportions and gangly limbs suggest a kind of sapling adolescence; but these very same qualities might be seen as emblems of old age: ancient trees clinging to unsympathetic rocks—their bent and drooping branches nearly barren rather than putting forth young shoots.

Whatever their stage of life, Owens' trees, which are adorned with spider webs, an occasional dangling cliche spider, caterpillars and the odd clump of flowers, are not the result of studying real trees in nature but the product of long acquaintance with representations of trees. They are post-deconstructionist trees, utilizing tropes of popular art without commentary, as if this were the only language of visual expression.

The seven nearly identical works on luscious beige tussah silk were silk-screened and then filled in, as an invisible FWM worker at the center of a crowded gallery talk explained, through "embroidery by number." The artist herself stitched a few elements, such as leaves, on each piece. As always, FWM materials are the best, as is its staff, which executed their collaborative tasks with consummate professionalism. It feels a bit churlish to be less than enthusiastic about the results.

However, though I do not especially dislike Owens' trees, I am indifferent to them, a response which ultimately is more damning. They aren't consequential enough to be vexing. See them, though, and judge for yourself; Owens is a hot commodity at the moment.

Aside from her, the people who participated in this project are coordinators Olivia Schreiner and Candy Depew and embroiderers Courtney Hager, Candace Lathrop and Lauren Durgin. I'm not acquainted with the personal artwork of each, but I do know that virtually everyone who works at the FWM is a skilled artist. If half the huge sums spent on Owens' fruitless trees had been given to one of these artists, the results would almost certainly have had more conceptual integrity and visual richness.

I liked Yinka Shonibare's adept cultural commentary of executing Victorian dresses in African batik prints, which were shown some time ago at the FWM (and currently are included in "African Art, African Voices" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Now at FWM, he's showing a sort of diorama of space walkers with a projected backdrop of a space capsule.

The space suits are made of printed fabric based on record albums produced by Philadelphia's famous Gamble and Huff—illustrations of bands like The Intruders, The Three Degrees, The O'Jays and even Jill Scott. The names of other black celebrities are also included in the print. The colorful space man and woman (one only knows genders from reading press materials) each have big black plastic spherical head coverings.

Perhaps because space suits are so dehumanizing, I found a pair of headless but physically articulated mannequins representing Victorian students in Pedagogy Boy/Boy to be more engaging. They wear European clothes made of kente cloth and share a seat at a vintage wooden desk. Kente cloth was originally made in Holland for export to Africa and only later came to be identified as an indigenous African fabric.

Shonibare is also showing a photographic installation relating to the movie version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which he takes the role of Dorian. He's representing this quintessentially young and beautiful aristocratic British hero as a not-so-young black man of average attractiveness. The often misunderstood character of Dorian compounded with the movie, which deviated notably from Oscar Wilde's novel, is provocative. Nevertheless, although the idea behind this work is intellectually engaging, Pedagogy Boy/Boy operates on a deeper, more complex, visual and emotional level.

Laura Owens

Yinka Shonibare Through Nov. 6, Fabric Workshop and Museum, 315 Cherry St., fifth floor, 215-568-1111

Thelma Golden, deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem, will speak about Shonibare's work on Thu., Oct. 7, at 6 p.m. at the Fabric Museum. Paul Schimmel of L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art will talk about Laura Owens on Fri., Nov. 5, also at 6 p.m.