JUNE 2010 - JUNKFISH CAVIAR reviewed at nola.com
Susan Gisleson's installation 'Junkfish Caviar' at Antenna Gallery
Published: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 9:00 AM Updated: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 9:26 AM
Artist Susan Gisleson with part of her installation "Junkfish Caviar" at Antenna Gallery.Coming of age in the 1970s could be bewildering. Lucky for artist Susan Gisleson, she had an older brother, 13, who had things pretty much figured out. The blooming of pubescence, it seemed to Gisleson, now 40, came down to a few essential points of reference, including Playboy magazines and beer can collections.
“Here’s the mystery,” she said. “Here’s the beast in the jungle. This is it. This is how you know what it means to be an adult, through pornography and beer cans.”
The glowing red walls of Gisleson’s outstanding current exhibit “Junkfish Caviar: A Piece of Work by Susan Gisleson” (more about the title later) at Antenna Gallery, are decorated with a pattern of flat, featureless, nude female silhouettes. Life-size, they dance around the gallery like a chorus line of the voluptuously vapid interchangeable images in her big brother’s girly magazines. Gisleson sawed the busty babes from hickory paneling — the perfect thing for a Gerald Ford-era boy’s room. Sparks of light from several disco balls speckle the gallery ceiling above the wooden bodies. On a high shelf, dozens of colorful vintage beer cans are lined up like toy soldiers.
Gisleson’s memory of the 1970s male mythos is only half of the show. The center of the gallery is given over to lovingly made symbolic portraits of her five sisters.
As a long-time costume designer, Gisleson chose to represent her female siblings as elegant evening gowns made of eccentric materials, displayed on identical dress manikins. One sister is represented by a complex dress made of overlapping oyster shells — a nod to her tough exterior and soft heart. Another sister’s symbolic gown is a patchwork of salvaged wood lath, adorned with a collection of skeleton keys — referencing her work restoring antique houses. The dress made of glinting broken mirror and pages of literature symbolizes the sister whose writing is a reflection of the world around her. The gown made of lustrous white rabbit skin stands in for beauty and vulnerability. The treacherous looking thorns, rope, and glass in another gown implies inescapable pain.
"Born and Raised in a Brier Patch Part two," one of Gisleson's stunning symbolic fashion-portraits of her 5 sisters. Gisleson was born in New Orleans and teaches art at Metairie Park Country Day School. A mother of two, she symbolized herself with a gown made of paper dress patterns surrounded by a clutter of tiny toys and scores of those plastic clips that seal bread wrappers (a tribute to all of the lunches she’s made over the years).
Long ago, Gisleson came to realize that her brother’s adolescent world view, as it applied to women anyway, may have been a bit two-dimensional. Her sculptures of her sisters are more individual and complex than the wooden cut-out women on the walls. That, of course, is the point.
“I consider my sisters almost goddess-like,” she said, “in their potential to do almost anything.”
There’s a touch of 1970s-vintage feminism in all this. But little apparent anger. You may get the sense that Gisleson has as much affection for her recollections of her dumb teenage brother as her accomplished sisters. Look closely at that beer can collection and you’ll discover that Gisleson created a custom can of “Junkfish Lager” emblazoned with a satirical 1970s-esque picture of herself.
Back to the title: In Louisiana, Gisleson explained, caviar is made from the eggs of undesirable fish — junk fish. She said she likes “the idea of finding the treasure in the garbage or the beauty in the drama. It’s potential. It’s hope.”
Gisleson says that her current coming-of-age show is just the first chapter in a series of “wildly imagined” autobiographical exhibits planned for the future. Let’s hope they are all as thoughtful, entertaining and beautifully crafted.
MAY 2010 - DANK MIRTH reviewed at NolaDefender.com
COMICS: MACRO, MICRO AND IN REALITY
Caesar Meadow's "Dank Mirth" is a dark, hilarious trip
by Christopher Herbeck
see full article at noladefender.com
Living in New Orleans it is possible that you may have acquired a small plastic bubble with a tiny 12-page comic book inside. One of these curious items might have been handed out at Mardi Gras, or it could be found in a capsule vending machine somewhere in the city. The person behind these little creations is Caesar Meadows, a New Orleans cartoonist whose work has appeared in local publications Where Y'at and AntiGravity Magazine. In "Dank Mirth" Caesar’s quirky characterizations burst from the pages of his "Qomix" strip into the space of the Antenna Gallery.
The sense of humor behind Meadow's work can best be described by the artist himself: "Dank Mirth is my term for a particular style of gallows humor familiar to those who make New Orleans their home. It is being able to still laugh at life when facing extraordinary misfortune. Taking comfort in surrendering to the fundamental absurdity of life rather than gnashing ones teeth at its inexplicable unfairness."
As grim as Caesar sounds, the humor in his art is very silly and over the top. One cannot help but giggle while standing under a floating comic strip thought-bubble with the words " Huh? Did I spy a poo poo kitty sneaking' out the door?" or "Damn, these satin panties are really creepin' up my butt-crack". About a dozen of these double-sided, plywood panels with similar quotes are hung from the gallery ceiling. On walls painted bright red and blue there is a series of one-frame comic strips that were painted on a square section of potato sac material. Referred to by the artist as "Qomix burlaps", these depictions of devastated characters in ridiculous circumstances test the boundaries of utter stupidity and comic brilliance.
The inherent conflict in Caesar’s Qomic burlaps is everyday man versus his grotesque environment, conveyed through the artist’s own brand of sharp wit. In “Fang hang” a dork wearing a green bowtie hangs from the tooth of a purple-skinned demon in a fiery underground hell. The dork’s undesirable fate is inevitable and laughable at the same time. “Little Beardies” shows an old man with little demons nesting in the waves of his flowing beard. While one demon sits in the corner grinding his teeth in anger, the rest seem drunk and jubilant. The old man is unimpressed with the creatures, yet his expression says that he is not compelled enough to do anything about them. One can only project what metaphor lies behind these images.
One of the more subtle successes of “Dank Mirth” is how seemingly small curatorial decisions cause the viewers to enter the world of Meadow’s comics. The genius use of the exhibition space allowed an artist whose primary medium is a printed comic strip to seamlessly explore the possibilities of viewer interactivity. Snapshots taken at the opening reception depict gallery hoppers as the characters trapped in Caesar’s script of a doomed reality. The way the curators pulled this one off is through a simple altering of visual perspective by painting each wall a bright color. It is not the flatness of the thought bubble that has entered the three dimensional world, it is the people that have been flattened into a forced two-dimensional reading of the photographs.
In one corner of the gallery there is a pedestal set up with small sculptures and mementos. My only criticism of the show would exist in this small area that appeared to be thrown in as an afterthought. Meadow’s small-scale installation is visually appealing, but does not match up when compared to the strength of the rest of the show. It seems that Caesar just started working in three dimensions and it would be nice to see where he would take it as he opens up possibilities for working with new materials. I would love to see what he would come up with when handed a few bars of colored Sculpey, multicolored sheets of felt, some cardboard, and a hot glue gun.
When in familiar territory, Caesar Meadow’s work is astute, and the slyness of his fellow art exhibitors is exceptional. Antenna Gallery certainly is a bright spot in the Bywater/ St. Claude art scene. With the show re-opening this weekend after minor flooding in the gallery, the public will have another chance to check out this unique one-artist show. Details can be found at http://www.press-street.com/antenna.
April 2010 - Projection Bias reviewed at NolaDefender.com
PROJECTION PROTECTION
A NoDef Art Review
Video art is hard. A lot of people don’t want to spend more than a couple seconds on any given piece and they only want to see it from behind the screen of their point and shoot. They forego those darkened museum rooms, secluded by heavy curtains where videos play on loop. So, an exhibition of video art is really hard. But it can be done. And Antenna Gallery’s most recent show, Projection Bias, does it well.
The show is about projection, the Freudian kind and the film kind. Robin Wallis Atkinson, the shows curator, selected works from Courtney Fathom Sell, Stephen Kwok, and Michael Anderson that fit into the medium and challenge the viewer to go beyond initial reactions and personal bias to “focus on what something actually is.” The concept comes off as a bit challenging, but the pieces fit the notion in a fantastically straightforward way.
Sell’s piece Erotic Symphony is a mash up of two videos. The piece shows documentation of a man in a transparent plastic mask awash in abstract layers paired with video footage of VHS porn edited to little more than fuzzy black and white images. The concept behind work being that, although bodies are not obvious in the abstracted pornos, the movement will still be there. Sell explained that he intends to “challenge notions of erotica” with these masked images.
If Sell’s Symphony challenges our perception by offering something unrecognizable, and subsequently forcing contemplation through the process of identification, Anderson’s piece works in the opposite direction. Presented with catalogue stock photo images of a model in an array of poses and tight sportswear, we are asked to realize the absurdity of a mundane image by looking at it repeatedly and frankly.
Kwok also does a great thing with a projector. In one of his three pieces he puts three public school pre-digital era projectors on the floor casting a question on the wall, What if you’re not special? The projectors on the floor, however, offer other questions and statements, within the same theme, but with totally different meanings. His work deals with insecurity and, what Atkinson describes as, “questions of personal and social identity.”
Plus with all the lights off and Anderson’s sinister soundtrack playing, it feels good in there.
Projection Bias is on view through May 2 at
Antenna Gallery
3161 Burgundy St
April 2009 - Sommiel, a Concert for Sleep
