Cryptic
Kisses and Other Tangible Tensions
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| Lock Born |
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| Kissing Stones |
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| Void in Echo |
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| Site of a Scene: in RED |
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| Site of a Scene: in a Blue Tint |
EXHIBIT: Distance
Loop, a solo exhibition featuring works by Melissa Vogley Woods / ending on December 5, 2019 / at The
William J. and Pearl F. Lemmon Gallery, located in the Fine Arts Building on
the Kent State University at Stark campus / 6000 Frank Avenue NW, North Canton,
Ohio
/ Gallery Hours for the remaining duration of the exhibit: Tuesday-
Wednesday, December 3d and 4th, 11:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m., AND Artist’s RECEPTION / Gallery
Talk: Thursday, December 5, 12:30pm
Toto, I
have a feeling we’re not in Canton anymore.
What makes the Lemmon Gallery a vital and
truly inspiring venue for viewing contemporary art is its singular purity of
design and potent agency of purpose. Here’s a place apart - a gorgeous retreat
from the commercially familiar, a challenging alternative to the locally safe
and insular, a venturing away from the comfortable and provincial. The art shown
here springs from a serious curatorial commitment (thanks for this installation
to Andrea Meyers) to presenting fresh, provocative aesthetic visions and
practices from beyond our immediate region.
The
announcement for this installation described the work of Melissa Vogley Woods -
a multidisciplinary artist from Columbus, Ohio - as focusing “…on the nature of internal and external conflict and resolution with
additional interests in erasure under patriarchy and homespun methodologies
against it.” Heady stuff, to be
sure.
A recurring
motif in Woods’ sculptural assemblages is the human mouth, in the form of
thick, curvaceous lips made from scagliola. Scagliola is a mixture of pigments
and plaster that can be fashioned to look like marble. In “Lock Born,” an
oblong rod of thin steel loops out from the wall, holding up a row of 12
marbleized orifices that hang in midair like so many pendants on jewelry chains.
Depending upon your viewing position, the lips appear to come at you from a
distance, starting with smaller, closed mouths at the far end that
progressively get larger as they open wider. There’s an eerie, indeed primal
sensuality about this work (a quality apparent in other pieces here as well)
which suggests something slowly emerging from tight-lipped silence into an
utterance – a single word, a phrase, maybe a shout. Or is it simply an exhaled
breath?
The four very
large canvas paintings included in the installation, collectively under the
theme of “Site of a Scene,” are lavish, glimmering abstractions in acrylic,
marble dust, various grounds, and water-based mediums. These are magnificently
complex and ambiguous panoramas wherein measured, regular patterns and structures
collide with, or melt into organic pools and atmospheric pockets of rich color.
Rigidity and fluidity in dramatic moments of equipoise. A visual theatre of
integration and disintegration all at once.
Other
sculptural pieces here confound easy definition or categorization. They can
seem alternately like garden totems, strange gravestones, or perhaps distant
cousins to cairns – forms, dating to ancient times, made from stones piled up as
memorials or landmarks. Memorials of what? Mended or broken relationships?
Loves lost and found? All of the above?
So I’m left in
a state of inquiry, of continued looking, wondering, even guessing. But with
art, it’s always the lingering questions, not the instantaneous or obvious
answers, which I’ve found to be the most compelling affirmation of being alive.
And besides, in the end, who doesn’t savor a really good mystery?
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