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Photos by Adrian Fussell
JULIE HEFFERNAN’S ‘Millennium Burial Ground,’ is part of the show ‘Wrath—Force of Nature’ at Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery.
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W
hen is the last time you felt as wrathful as a force of nature? Or as envious as a wicked stepparent in a fairy tale? Nearby exhibits focusing on the seven deadly sins provide much food for thought about our some of our most intense feelings. Wave Hill’s show on “Wrath—Force of Nature” and the Hudson River Museum’s “Envy: One Sin, Seven Stories” are part of a series of seven shows at members of the Fairfield/Westchester Museum Alliance. While the concept might seem, well, medieval, the works on display make for a scintillating exploration that hits close to home. For its exposé of envy, the Hudson River Museum, located at 511 Warburton Ave. in Yonkers, commissioned multimedia artist Adrien Broom to create scenes from seven fairy tales, most of them known to us through the Brothers Grimm. Ms. Broom’s macabre interpretations are a far cry from the popular Disney versions. Her series on Snow White features an envious queen feasting on a heart in one image. At the end of the sequence, we see the heroine take grim revenge on her tormenter by making her dance herself to death in coalhot clogs.
Wave Hill, Hudson River Museum, join consortium to explore art of sin
Wrath of the gods
Subtle sin A pair of splendid black and white gowns crowns the show, with dark chords extending between the faces of mannequins floating above visitors. Mirrors dangle from the trim of the garments, suggesting an endless refraction of emotions that inculpates both the envious and the envied. To repeat: Ms. Broom’s Snow White tortured her stepmom to death. Notwithstanding the spec-
In photo at left, Anne Peabody’s ‘Wildfire’ at Wave Hill. Top right, paintings and props at the Hudson River Museum. Bottom right, David Opdyke’s sculpture at Wave Hill. tacular outcomes of many of the fairy tales, Hudson River Museum curator Bart Bland noted, “Envy, I think, is the most subtle of all the sins. It tends to be the most internalized of them.” “To be envious of someone,
you tend to have to really be close enough to them or be enough on their level that there is sort of a direct comparison you can make between yourself [and that person],” he continued. “I’m not going to become
envious of George Clooney or a movie star or the president of the United States. The distance is too great for envy to occur.” Wave Hill, located at West 249th Street and Independence Avenue, took an entirely differ-
ent approach than the Hudson River Museum. The local garden and cultural center is displaying paintings from 12 contemporary artists who explore the violent side of the environment.
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Works by Brian Adam Douglas employ a strange pastiche of contemporary and Renaissance symbols, all on a background of natural devastation. One scene puts the dramatic gestures from a Pietà at the center of a flood where survivors sit on rooftops and birds whirl chaotically.
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Acrylic paintings by Kent Monkman show manmade structures like a ship and a bridge succumbing to the elements. There is also a copper, wood and glass sculpture of wild vines that look like they are coming in through a window inside Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery. The works remind us of the ancient idea that natural destruction showed the wrath of the gods. “We were hoping that by seeing these different examples, it gives people a way of talking about climate change and natural disasters,” said Wave Hill’s Director of Arts and Senior Curator Jennifer McGregor. “Some people have felt it’s a little heavy and gloomy, but this is the world we live in. It’s important to see how artists are interpreting it.” There are all kinds of connections one could make among the works in the seven deadly sins series, all of which are still running except for an exhibit on lust at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. “Envy and wrath, if you look at a graph or a pie chart, they often are sort of opposites of each other because wrath is so overt and envy is so hidden,” Mr. Bland said. “Wrath—Force of Nature” runs through Monday, Sept. 7 at Wave Hill. “Envy: One Sin, Seven Stories” runs through Saturday, Sept. 26 at the Hudson River Museum. For more information, go to www.wavehill.org or www.hvcca.org.
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By Shant Shahrigian