Forget the ink blot.
There’s no better Rorschach than a work of art. Its interpretation owes as much to the personal and cultural baggage the viewer brings to the gallery as the artist’s intentions.
Exhibit A: “Seepages,” an engaging group show at Whitespace.
Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, its curator and star, based the show on the theme of porous boundaries between urban, suburban and natural spaces, an idea that has animated work for some time.
The Atlanta native, now living in Philadelphia, invited artists who share her interests -- six Philly peers and Atlantan John Otte -- to participate. Each contributed smaller works, hung in the first gallery, and large-scale pieces expressly made for the second gallery.
“Hinterlands,” an installation she made with Otte and spouse Vance Stiefel, suggests an artist in command of her materials and ideas. As in the past, the artist has built a spidery network made of pipe cleaners twisted into a variety of patterns, which creeps along a collaged wall designed by Otte, across the ceiling and onto the floor. There is also a free-standing sculpture.
The web is embellished with everyday detritus -- bits of plastic or mesh bags affixed with straight pins to the structure, plastic containers -- and decorative elements like pom-poms and the hot-pink tubes that hang from the ceiling, all of which are exploited for their color and shape.
The piece suggests urban sprawl, creeping vines, cellular organisms, stalactites and stalagmites, fences, landfills. Vance Stiefel’s sound component -- field recordings taken near their home and other sounds -- underscores the merging of these worlds.
Though one might enjoy the piece as a wondrous transformation of trash and common materials, Otte’s contribution shifts its effect to the dark side, encapsulated in a photo of a junky car squishing some stray greenery against a chain link fence and brought home by the live feed of the BP oil catastrophe on a computer Otte set up behind the wall.
Suddenly, Cinderella’s carriage turns into a pumpkin. The pipe-cleaner webs look like fishing nets in polluted water or some metastasizing force swallowing everything in its path.
The other pieces in the room are also affected. The billowing black cloud in Ward Davenny and Kate Stewart’s “Smoke Drawing,” a reference to Davenny’s experience as a storm-chaser, suggests oil gushing from a rig.
Similarly, the jagged rhythms, colliding diagonals and black paint that seems to ooze over greenery in Arden Bendler Browning’s stunning abstract painting “Blindspots” suggest the havoc of the oil spill, even though Browning’s impetus was the kaleidoscopic experience of her urban environment -- landscape whizzing by through the car window, details noted while walking, computer maps.
Now you have her intention and my take. You, no doubt, will see it your way.
Catherine Fox is chief art critic of ArtCriticATL.com.
“Seepages”
Through July 31. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Whitespace, 814 Edgewood Ave., Atlanta. 404-688-1892. www.whitespace814.com .
Bottom line: Thought-provoking and visually pleasing; worth a visit.
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