Cutting No Corners: Caesurae Opens at Urbis Artium
Growing up in public schools, we never bothered to learn Latin, but we hear that Caesurae translates to “cutting,” and this aptly titled group exhibition at Urbis Artium is not for the faint of heart. The show opens with Jordan Eagles’ series of luminous resin pieces that from far away look like the cross section of old-growth Redwood with their deep red, cracked concentric circles. Upon closer inspection, you find that the red color is actually blood combined with copper powder, the element which gives the work its incandescent glow. The blood and metal is then absorbed into cheesecloth and layered in resin.
Normally, we get a little grossed out by work that uses blood (although we admire the chutzpah of the artist) – Andres Serrano and Gina Pane come to mind, but their work was more about self-mutilation and shock value. Eagles’ pieces instead reference transformation and history (think tree rings) or as he puts it, “moments frozen in time.” Because the work is so mesmerizingly beautiful, it is hard to believe that it was banned from New Jersey’s annual “Art at Overlook” for the simple fact that it contains blood (not the artist’s, it was obtained from a slaughterhouse).
Eagles is also a master of craftsmanship, managing to create a flawless series that has depth, rich texture and brilliant color from natural materials that can be difficult to work with. To create a darker red in some pieces, he left the layers of blood in the sun to oxidize and change the hue. The result is a solid body of work that is practically perfect and manages to elude any shock value that comes with using the medium, and instead conveys the intangible connection between body and spirit.
SFist Shelley, contributing
Image: Jordan Eagles, "Unity," mixed media
Eagles’ series fits perfectly with the next body of work in the show by collaborative partners and former San Franciscans, Craig LaRotonda and Kim Maria. Their found object assemblages are dark and mysterious and address similar themes of death, rebirth and the weight of personal history. Each piece reminds us of a vintage cuckoo clock like the ones our grandpa keeps in his basement (don’t ask), only instead of a funny little bird, we see old, sepia photos of men and women with their faces partially obscured.
Equal parts kitsch and macabre, each of the photos are surrounded by odds and ends, such as jawbone fragments, saw blades, illustrations, puzzles – everything alluding to something hidden in the anonymous person’s past. In the piece, “Secrets Worth Keeping” we see part of a man’s face and part of a woman’s and the image of hands holding – these two were probably lovers and we are left to come up with our own stories for how they met and how they died. They could have been brother and sister for all we know, or maybe accomplices in a horrific murder … we could literally do this for hours and never get tired.
The other two artists in the show were less successful in moving us or making us think. Although Clint Imboden’s installation, “Soul” did almost make us have a panic attack. The piece is essentially a column of found chest x-rays that extends from the floor to the ceiling with an opening for you to enter inside and peer at the multiple images of ribcages and spinal columns. Being the hypochondriac we are, we couldn’t help but look at each one searching for hidden tumors until we were turning around and around in circles. It was at that precise moment when we heard the distinct sound of a heartbeat, an irregular heartbeat, which we now know is part of the installation. It had us gasping for breath in a very Tell-Tale Heart sort of way and blindly searching for the way back out. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Imboden’s background is in psychology.
Lastly, David Zuttermeister, a San Francisco installation artist had the one piece in the show we absolutely couldn’t explain and really didn’t take much note of until it was time to leave. His piece, “Temple of Morteriality (Twin Anxieties)” is tucked in a back corner of the gallery and unfortunately looks like rows of paper towels hanging from a beam. At first glance, we thought these could have been hung by a painting crew between shows, but then we saw that objects (a hammer and handbag? Random!) had been pressed into sheets of papier mache, or similar material, leaving a ghostlike imprint. The work wasn’t bad, but it certainly didn’t seem to fit with the theme of the show and could have been better served if it didn’t looked like an accident that it was there in the first place.
Overall the majority of work in Caesurae is consistently thoughtful and intimate but also meant to be fun and enjoyed by those with imaginative and slightly perverse minds (like us).
Caesurae
Urbis Artium Gallery through June 2
49 Geary Street
Gallery Hours: Tues.–Fri.10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sat. 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
Image: Craig LaRotonda & Kim Maria, "The Cutter," mixed media