Bestiarum Vocabulum

Bestiarum Vocabulum

Jessie Boyko Melissa Dickenson Lisa Dillin Evan Morgan

Jenny Mullins David Page Beverly Ress Gowri Savoor

presented by the art + art history department

Goucher College

R o s e n b erg G a l l e ry

Bestiarum Vocabulum

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“ What is a man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man.”

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— Chief Seattle

A bestiary or bestiarum vocabulum is a book, popular in the Middle Ages, which contains illustrated descriptions of various animals, birds, and rocks. The natural history and images of each beast are typically accompanied by a moral lesson.

In addition to providing intriguing interpretations of animals, bestiaries offer tales about the existence of bizarre and loathsome mythical creatures.

While animals have always been popular subjects in the visual arts, appearing as decoration, symbols, and allegories, animal imagery has made an important resurgence in recent decades. Developments in genetic engineering, the extinction of species due to destruction of habitats, an influx of animal-advocacy groups such as PETA, the increase of pet ownership, and the elevation in illnesses transmitted from animals to humans have all given rise to a renewed interest in human interaction with animals and the natural world.

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Many contemporary artists, by anthropomorphizing animals and using beasts as metaphor, create a unique vocabulary — animals become symbols of human anxieties, human failures, and the fragility of the natural world. Recovering a connection to animals that was lost through industrialization may be spiritually restorative, as well as profoundly subversive — perhaps challenging hierarchies that have dominated our relationship with non-humans for millennia.

Jessie Boyko’s and Melissa Dickenson’s paintings, Lisa Dillin’s and Evan Morgan’s sculptures, Jenny Mullins’s animations, Beverly Ress’s and Gowri Savoor’s drawings, and David Page’s sculptures bring our attention to the vulnerability of our natural world and to our own, oftentimes, reckless human nature. Bestiarum Vocabulum, then, explores the complicated relationship that exists between humans and animals.

Laura Amussen, curator

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For the past two years, painter Jessie Boyko has been investigating the animal form. Influenced by her observations and travels abroad, she depicts wildlife from different geographical locations of the world. Boyko believes that watching an animal — whether it be domesticated or in the wild — walk, run, eat, or play is one of life’s luxuries,. The animals she paints allow her to comment on beastly doings, time and chaos, the environment, and the effect of the environment on animals.

Tapestry, 2007 Oil on canvas 84” x 64”

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Melissa Dickenson’s paintings of animal and plant life, together with the natural paper she uses, are meant to be a dialogue of survival in an ever-advancing technological world. Neither the creatures’ vivid colors nor the organic forms that comprise the landscapes are truly found in nature; they are abstracted and ask the viewer to imagine surreal environments, which are becoming our reality.

Many of the animalia are removed from a “normal” context, allowing for disorder in the laws of nature and paralleling the estrangement from nature in our own lives.

Sea Quest II, 2008 Acrylic and ink on paper 17” x 14”

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Lisa Dillin’s sculptures are influenced by the relationship between the simulacra created by man and the allure of the natural world. These artificial representations of flora and fauna are seamlessly integrated into our public and domestic spaces. Dillin believes that artificial nature is a manifestation of the primal desire to connect with the natural world while subsisting in the built environment. These products are nostalgic trinkets akin to pictures of a loved one gazed upon while living in a foreign land.

And Here We Will Build an Igloo (detail view), 2007 Polystyrene foam, epoxy, fabric, polyurethane plastic 24” x 48” x 78”

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Evan Morgan makes no attempt to establish meaning in his sculptures — playfully distorted animals that are familiar yet surreal. Instead, Morgan is interested in the plethora of icons and symbols wiped clean of meaning and absorbed into a culture that no longer uses them as means of artistic expression laden with allegory. His absurd animals become appropriated objects devoid of iconic value.

Los amantes peleando (Quarreling Lovers), 2006 Car paint on stoneware 16” x 11” x 5”

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Piles of sloths reveling in a carnal orgy. Rabbits choking on weeds seething from their throats. These are the characters of Jenny Mullins’s fantastical animations, and they are simultaneously grotesque and precious. Mullins’s characters explore the heightened perversity of animals and plants committing and suffering intrinsically human atrocities.

They expose a human parody in an animal fairytale where the atmosphere is at once playful and sinister.

Choking Rabbit, 2008 Water color and walnut ink on paper 14” x 18”

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Beverly Ress’s exquisitely rendered drawings are an inspiration for understanding our own existence. Ress describes her work as an ongoing visual investigation of mortality, depicting carefully observed representations of things — birds, plants, bugs, and animals — that have wandered off this mortal coil. Each is equal to the others in its mortality. After drawing an object with as much detail and verisimilitude as possible, Ress often reworks the drawing by cutting into it, tearing it, folding it, and weaving it, physically re-organizing the structure of the work.

mole/stick, 2007 Colored pencil on paper, cut and woven 30” x 22”

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Inspired by nature and childhood fables, Gowri Savoor’s drawings explore the space between two worlds: childhood memory and current existence. By blurring the boundaries between reality, memory, and myth, she creates hybrid characters, seamlessly morphing her own anatomy into body parts of birds and branches. There is something identifiable in these bizarre beings, which address issues of loss, vulnerability, and displacement.

While I Sleep, 2008 Ink pen on paper 11” x 18”

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David Page’s impeccably crafted sculptures subtly explore our consumption of animals. Page believes that perhaps the most complex and necessary intimate relationship that postagrarian humans have with animals is with the ones we eat.

In our culture, we have a collective image of meek, happy farm animals, which is at odds with a consumption pattern that requires feedlot mentality. Page also reveals the moral dilemma of killing and eating sentient beings, not to mention the breeding, feeding, and engineering methods that are employed: contemporary processing, packaging, and marketing practices present meat as product rather than body part, allowing consumers to dodge the dilemma.

This little piggy had roast beef & this little piggy had none, 2005 Leather, wood, sand, thread 24” x 18” x 18” (each approx.)

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Bestiarum Vocabulum Jessie Boyko Melissa Dickenson Lisa Dillin Evan Morgan

Jenny Mullins David Page Beverly Ress Gowri Savoor

September 15 – October 19, 2008 Opening Reception: Thursday, September 25, 6-8 p.m.

www.goucher.edu/rosenberg

Directions

Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus.

Gallery Hours

9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Call 410.337.6333 for evening and weekend hours.

The Rosenberg Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the NEA, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences.

C9061-09/08