"Racecar," curated by artist P. Seth Thompson at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, is chock-full of interesting work. It's a mix of local artists and farther-flung ones, many of whom address themes of mortality, family, loss, time's passage and the disconnection that our technology-centric modern life can bring.
But Thompson may risk derailing his ideas even before he gets started, with some unnecessarily circular and obtuse language in gallery wall text greeting visitors at the entrance to the exhibition. That garbled introduction only serves to indicate how difficult it can sometimes be to thematically connect the work in this group show.
Some of the experiences treated in “Racecar”— like death — are both timeless and universally human. We’ve all been there, in some sense, through our own experience of loss.
Other ideas feel more specific to our digitally detached age. Such is the case with the strange mix of intimacy and alienation seen in a work by Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman centered on Twitter posts. In a time-lapse video, the artists document sites — conference rooms and office spaces — where tweets are dispatched into the world like secret, coded messages beamed out from enemy territory. An electronic voice reads the tweets on the video soundtrack, turning something human and intimate into a kind of space chatter, data spilling out into the universe. The work is interesting though not necessarily satisfying.
It’s the odd jigsaw piece from another puzzle that has found its way into the box, much like the work that opens the show, David Herbert's horrifying, putrefying sculpture of Mickey Mouse. In “Mickey,” the creature’s friendly features appear to be rotting from his body. Great work in another context perhaps, but hard to reconcile with what’s to come, as is the inclusion of the 1968 George Romero horror classic “Night of the Living Dead,” also on view for those willing to sit for over an hour in the gallery to see how the film intersects with other works in the show.
One of the most compelling works in “Racecar,” from New York artist Richard Renaldi, is a disarmingly sweet series of 11 color photographs of a couple in various hotel rooms in their international travels. Their rooms are luxurious in Korea and spartan in Bolivia, and they sit on beds or groom in tiny bathrooms, their relationship the one constant despite the changing setting. The work is endearing and tender — a portrait of the photographer and his partner in private moments that testify to relationships that endure even as time and space change.
The works flow nicely into the similarly bittersweet color-riot paintings done by Tori Tinsley, an Atlanta artist who treats her mother's death from dementia in her work. In "Racecar," Tinsley's cartoonish pink figures — like blobs of emotion literally made flesh — traverse strange environments: caves and forests, one figure often carrying or consoling the other. Despite the difficulties, they remain together, holding hands, reassuring each other in moments of fear and crisis.
Another work about the death of a parent, Nick Madden’s “I Hope There Are Ghosts” longs for a connection with someone who is gone, in this case his mother, who died from Alzheimer’s. Madden has created a nicely bizarre, sofa-sized rendition of his mother’s head lying prone on the gallery floor and crafted from cardboard in the style of an Easter Island head crossed with a papier-mache parade mask. Viewers can activate a Theremin embedded in his mother’s head by moving a hand near an antenna to — as wall text instructs — attempt communication with the dead.
There’s no denying “Racecar”’s curator Thompson has an eye for strong work. But he needs to build his case more effectively, put aside the obfuscating language and allow a talent for finding compelling work to align with more coherent and cogent ideas.
ART REVIEW
“Racecar”
Through July 30. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Free. Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, 492 Prillaman Way, Kennesaw. 470-578-3223,zuckerman.kennesaw.edu.
Bottom line: This group show boasts interesting work, but with a curator who needs to focus, it is often difficult to forge connections between the artists.
