Art Review: 'Tributaries' is wickedly witty art
In art and literature, as in life, there is cleverness and there is wit. Our reaction to cleverness tends to be "Oh, that's, um, clever," because cleverness is a one-note device. Wit, however, cuts deeper; there is little wit without ambiguity or ambivalence, without a tweak at our expectations. Oscar Wilde, for example, is the epitome of wit, and beneath his bon mots we hear the whisper of anguish.
Susan Myers' "Memories of Happiness Blue," 2009, of fabricated aluminum.
Myers' "Disposable: Chinese Takeout," 2005, of silver-plated copper and brass.
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These thoughts apply to "Tributaries IX; Susan Myers," a small but potently witty exhibition at the National Ornamental Metal Museum through May 23. Myers is a widely exhibited metalworker or artist -- these pieces would comfortably fit into any gallery in Lower Manhattan -- who works as a project manager for a nonprofit arts organization in Philadelphia. She has a master of fine arts degree from Syracuse University.
Three of the pieces in her show are from her "Memories of Happiness" series, subtitled "Yellow," "Blue" and "Magenta," according to the color of the wood panel base. They're presents! Yes, each sculpture offers a stack of shallow gift boxes of varying dimensions, made of matte aluminum, tied together with extravagant ribbons and bows fashioned from aluminum flashing, a medium that lends delicacy and flexibility.
"Blue" offers the tallest stack of presents, and also the most elaborate, the most baroque assembly of cascading ribbons and bows. The cool and unimpeachable surfaces of the boxes, like something that shrinks subtly from your touch (or refuses to engage your touch), contrasts with the exhilarating curves and swoops of the ribbons.
Our expectations are confounded. Gifts or presents embody every sense of possibility and hope, yet here the gift boxes defy their own shivery, silvery decoration, which, while tinselly in effect, conjure an aspect of tensile strength almost beyond comprehension. Your hand is out-stretched to receive, but then you back away from these gifts, however much they may entrance the eye.
More nuanced, yet more profound, are selections from a group of works that seemingly go by the names of Chinese restaurants: "Golden Pagoda," "Lucky Dragon," "China Star." It takes a minute or two for the eye and the brain to understand what is going on with these pieces, which are surpassingly beautiful yet fraught with mystery. They appear to be vessels, made of gleaming silver-plate, many-sided and angled, splayed open and adorned with lovely tracings or etchings of plant and flower motifs, of traditional decorative design. Then you realize that at the top of one side is a sort of flange and at the top of another side is a slot, and the scheme falls into place. These are high-art renditions of the perhaps universal object, the Chinese food take-out box.
In fact, the case is more complicated. Myers has taken, has reclaimed, the silver-plated serving trays found in Chinese restaurants from coast to coast and remade them as iconic and hieratic versions of take-out boxes, raising them from the garbage can of household detritus to the pedestal of objets d'art. Just as "sport utility vehicle" is an oxymoron -- "sport" and "utility" are opposing functions -- the fact that a tray from a Chinese restaurant can be refashioned into a glamorous rendition of a cardboard box used to convey leftover moo goo gai pan to one's refrigerator clinches several clichés into one provocative and perplexing bouquet. If we are what we eat, do we become what we hold sacred?
Pretty clever stuff, and adroitly, disturbingly witty.
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"Tributaries IX: Susan Myers"
On display at the National Ornamental Metal Museum, 374 Metal Museum Drive, through May 23. There will be a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Call 774-6380.
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