Crawling From the Wreckage
Downtown art crawl proves both probing and diverting in an anxious week
by Emily Bartlett Hines
- Kaboom! "Explosion," Herb Williams
"How relevant can you be?" asks Herb Williams, gesturing at a sketch hanging in the Rymer Gallery. It's a rhetorical question. Williams, an artist and curator at the gallery, is talking about Kevin T. Kelly's "Panic Scenario," in which an elegantly dressed woman out of 1950s romance comics cowers behind the smoking wreckage of an airplane. The patrons who attended Oct. 4's downtown gallery crawl had endured more than one recent "panic scenario" of their own—this was, after all, the week that witnessed the continuing crash and burn of both the stock market and Sarah Palin's credibility. Judging from their enthusiasm for the show, this relevance wasn't lost on them.
The Rymer is one of Nashville's newest galleries; it opened in September 2007 and debuted at its Fifth Avenue location in July of this year. Many of the works currently displayed there share a common aesthetic, inspired by mid-century pop art: They're brightly colored, highly stylized and often humorous. This accessible approach, exemplified by exhibits like Kelly's Incite, attracted more viewers than ever to this month's art crawl. (Because gallery owner Jeff Rymer estimates attendance by the crowd's wine consumption—upwards of four cases—it's always possible that Nashvillians were just drinking more.)
Kelly's Lichtenstein-esque cartoon paintings depict citizens who are strangely oblivious to the explosions and other disasters taking place around them. Herb Williams' crayon sculptures exploit a similar incongruity between the whimsical and the disturbing. His "Homage to Lichtenstein" is a stylized depiction of what looks like a tower of flame or complex mushroom cloud, done in black, red, orange, yellow and white crayons, their spiky ends pointing outward. The crayons, small points of saturated color, work like pixels in a digital image. There's nothing impersonal about the works, though; they're slightly bumpy and retain a homemade quality.
Williams lists readymade artists like Marcel Duchamp among his influences, and the self-referential joke of using these quotidian objects as raw materials for sculpture, rather than tools for drawing, contributes to the pieces' charm. But he wants to use his work to explore larger, more adult issues. When he first started working with crayons, he sculpted American flags, a way for him to consider "what it means to be an American artist" in a global age. His chosen medium lets him ask such questions in an accessible way; looking at these sculptures, one can't help but be reminded of the tactile pleasures of childhood art-making.
Tapping into our shared memories imparts a sincerity to references that might otherwise be read as ironic. The current exhibit at the Rymer focuses on Williams' relationship to favorite artists, with witty updates on Wayne Thiebaud's cupcake paintings and Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull. He says that these homages are a way for him to "imagine myself in the same room with a lot of my heroes."
While Williams approaches a range of topics with childlike humor, Erin Plew, a student at Watkins College of Art and Design, describes her favorite subjects as "sexy and disgusting." The paintings in her first solo show, Processed, depict cuts of raw meat: What appear to be steak, liver and pigs' feet lie on an ominously industrial-looking bluish-gray surface, spilling out past the edges of the frame.
Plew uses thick gobs of oil paint to render her subjects in lurid reds, pinks and whites. This pun on "rendered," by the way, is hard to avoid; the parallel these paintings create between the meat's sensuous surface and that of the canvas is part of the point. In one untitled work, red paint drips downward from a cut of meat, mimicking the effect of dripping blood. And in other paintings, Plew further "processed" the flesh by working from digital photographs that distorted its colors, making them slightly unreal.
Plew acknowledges that her models are "a little bit repulsive"—she picked them up at a seedy local meat market—but sees a beauty in them that she wants the world to recognize. Her brushstrokes reveal their fine gradations in color and texture, as well as their unpredictable, sensuously organic shapes. These paintings are a canny update on the traditional memento mori still life, which aims to discomfit the reader by reminding us of our own fragile, decaying bodies. In an era when most of us are feeling more vulnerable than ever, it's a powerful message.
The Rymer Gallery, 233 Fifth Ave. N., is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; the current exhibit runs through Oct. 25. Processed is on display through Oct. 31 at Gallery 59 in the Arcade, 244 Fifth Ave. N., 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and by appointment.
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