R E V I E W S like a zoom lens on the camera inside your eye—it seems to reach off the wall, there’s a bit of vertigo and the feeling of falling into the pictorial space. Soon the edges of the compositions pass by your peripheral vision and the massiveness of its flourishing detail envelops your field of sight and you are all the way down in there, inside the deep space of phosphorescent galaxies. In Evening Switch (2021) there’s a sense of a classical grotto, a decadent place of Dionysian romping with tame peacocks, grape-laden trellises and secret magic. The dark heart of the image pulls the viewer’s body closer; the eye wishes to more fully enter and explore, to see in the dark. The most charismatic work of the exhibition is The Bottoms (2021), whose operatic melodrama is built on the tension between chartreuse and fuschia. The supernova center and string of fireball pearls both anchor and disrupt its expansive picture plane; the many forms of brushwork generate a universe of image and detail—but there is nowhere to rest the eye and nothing is finitely rendered. Neither reliably narrating nor entirely avoiding the phenomenological world, the work’s true subject is painting itself—both a scientific inquiry into the physical properties and behaviors of paint as a material, and a more esoteric, mindful investigation of painting as a way of expressing the inexpressible splendor of existence. Sula Bermúdez Silverman, Carrefour Pietà / Be My Victim, 2021, courtesy Murmurs.
“Loosely Stated” ROSEGALLERY by Daniel Austin Warren
With a large grouping of esteemed photographers— Jo Ann Callis, Tania Franco Klein, Kennedi Carter, Graciela Iturbide, Katsumi Watanabe and others— it’s the curator, not the artists, who moderates the conversation. In a world defined by schisms and polarities, and a yearlong hiatus on reality, “Loosely Stated” suggests a taciturn yet stimulating alternative to slackening mores, a pomerium free from constellated hatreds. With its many singlesubject photos of women and by women, of men and women of color by women of color, this exhibition is many things: an unlabeled feminism, a non-competing intersectionality, a polite insinuation of
unspeakable American horrors. It denotes without crystallizing into fragile definition. No image steals the spotlight; each contains depth and multitude without transgressing upon its neighbor. In Jo Ann Callis’ Salt, Pepper, Fire (1980) we see a tableaux: white tablecloth, full cup of coffee, one salt and one pepper shaker, and immolating dinner plate—but do we notice the orange-washed phoenix sidling to the left? In haste, we miss the escaping bird; without which, the work loses its horrifying implication; patience snaps the image into sublime revelation. More than simple fire, this is a scene of gripping violence: animal sacrifice fleeing unobserved ritual. Perhaps patience is still valued in a world of breakneck consumption, expedited biases and rewarded delusions. If we take time, reorient ourselves to the sensed world and begin to hear with our eyes, multiple dialogues are revealed. Pioneering Los Angeles artist Callis has clearly influenced the emerging Mexico City-based Tania Franco Klein. In another room, two opposing walls feature Black subjects in contrasting representations: Kennedi Carter’s Soon As I Get Home II, from “East Durham Love” (2019) is a cropped closeup, an Ono/Lennonesque portrait of a man receiving affection from a woman (she is cropped, and only emerges with patient viewing); it utilizes colors that are oil-painting-rich and connotes a re-seized colonial mystique. Opposite, selects from Melodie McDaniel’s wide-shot black-and-white portraits of rider and horse possess cinema verite sprezzatura. Yes, this room replete with female gaze doesn’t call attention to the label; it needs us to investigate and arrive at its reality. While not vying for huge exclamations or jaw-dropping denouement, “Loosely Stated” reminds us that the best conversations are never one-sided; that they are, at best, unresolved. It’s also a stark reminder of power exercised through inhibition; majesty, if you will. But can reconciliation of atrocities forge with this updated Neo-American ideal? Since we are formalized around a global anxiety, one that fissures into all aspects of our lived experience, inverts our perceptions, problematizes our instinct to care and to hug and to love, perhaps stillness represents the true act of defiance.
Sula Bermùdez-Silverman Murmurs by Angela Groom
Sula Bermùdez-Silverman’s solo exhibition “Sighs and Leers and Crocodile Tears,” at first seems to be a curious series of clichés, but Left: Jo Ann Callis, Salt, Pepper, Fire, 1980, courtesy of ROSEGALLERY.
