Review: Systems

I went to Systems, an art gallery show in the Business Incubator on West Federal last week.  Here's the review:

The first piece you see on your left as you enter the exhibition is Ross Mazzupappa's piece, “Et Tu, Georgio.” It's a large piece that consists of a lot of bluish-green paisley-esque pieces of paper linked together like fish scales. It's very reminiscent of water flowing, and creates a sort of sense of tranquility and peace. The work itself is very strong and simple. It conveys a wonderful sense of energy flowing from one place to another. It can be used quite easily for meditation, and if it was turned into wallpaper would be the perfect addition to any bedroom or study. Unfortunately, the viewer is yanked out of that sense of lucidity by the presence of a giant seagull at the very center of the piece. The seagull is black and white, in stark contrast of the tan and aquamarine of the scallops, and stands out like a giraffe at the Kentucky Derby. I can only assume by the title, “Et Tu, Georgio,” with its ties to Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar,” that Georgio is in fact the seagull, and he's backstabbed the audience simply by appearing in the work and marring the placidity of the gently lapping waves.

Overall, this is a very good piece, more than adequately displaying Mazzupappa's skills both as a printmaker and as an artist and composer. He's created a piece that conveys not one, but two emotions: gentle tranquility and jarring frustration, ultimately showing that lucidity and meditation are fragile things and must be treasured wherever they're found.

The next piece you come to, moving around the room in a clockwise fashion, is Katelyn Gould's piece, “Graduating Class.” It's ink and acrylic on paper, consisting of eighty-one playing-card sized pieces of paper with faces drawn on each in simple ballpoint pen. Each of the faces appears to be a person in their teens, with the clothing and hairstyles suggesting that they graduated from high school in the 1960s. Their races are about as varied as you'd expect at a high school that recently became desegregated. They are primarily white, with a sprinkling of black features here and there. Almost all of them are smiling.

More than anything else, this piece is reminiscent of a high school yearbook. It conveys a sense of a bygone era, with three-piece suits on the guys and high, laced necklines on the gals. They look like they all got dolled up to have their picture taken, which at the time may have been a big deal.

The piece overall seemed less like a work of art in a gallery and more like a series of drawings meant to document an era in history. I didn't really like this piece, which surprised me because so far I've enjoyed everything I've seen of Gould's. To me, the message conveyed by the piece was probably not the one that Gould had in mind. To me it said that everyone has their off days.

The third piece, following the western wall of the gallery, is Maryssa Moczan's “Lucid Dream.” Like Mazzupappa's “Georgio,” Moczan's piece is all about the fluidity of the medium. In this case, she used ceramic hemispheres with a metallic, patina-ed glaze creating the look of the bubbles created by rainfall on asphalt at night. No joke, that's exactly the image that sprung to mind. They are arranged in a very organic, flowing pattern that follows the wall around a corner, and in fact makes the corner appear to be almost curved. It uses the space perfectly, molding itself to the area in which it was installed. Because of its mutability, it brings to mind the adaptability of nature. It winds around the wall like ivy, climbing to the ceiling in a beautiful display of gentle curves and whorls.

This was easily one of my favorite pieces in the gallery.

Continuing around the gallery, you have to literally step on the next exhibit to get across the room. It's a work by Lezlie Thorndike, titled “Tread Softly.” Underneath the title and medium on the titlecard is scrawled, in blue ballpoint, the words “Yes you can!” This refers to the title, and the fact that the artist actually wants people to walk on her work.

It's a sculpture made of newspaper, glue, and acrylic, and placed on the floor to provide a sort of artistic rug. The newspaper has been cut and molded in such a way as to represent a topographical map, with ridges and valleys worked into it. The whole piece, when looked at from a distance, appears to be an amorphous blob of something which may have spilled on the floor, but from a little bit closer resembles a small island continent, with fjords and peninsulas jutting out onto the floor. This is only reinforced by the topographical contours of the surface.

However, the visual impact of the piece is only part of the art. The real art hits you when you walk across it. The newspaper has been glued together in such a way that it is not one solid piece. Rather, it feels more like walking across a particularly dense shag carpet. As you walk across the striations, it feels like you're walking across the sandy floor of a tropical ocean. The ridges rise gently, never more than a quarter inch higher than the rest of the piece. The whole thing settles as your weight comes down, giving it a foamy texture.

This piece was delightful to experience.

The next piece on the wall is, “A Distribution of Fanatic Space,” by Hector Gonzalez. It's the first of the more traditional media, being oil on canvas. From across the room, it appears to be a random, Pollock-esque collection of splotches of color, but as you approach they resolve into definite shapes. The first thing I noticed were the floral shapes, done mostly in shades of purple and green, that are scattered liberally throughout the piece. After that, I noticed a number of shapes that looked like nothing more than yellow and orange depictions of intestines and stomachs. For the most part, the flower-like shapes twine in front of the more... gastrointestinal shapes, but occasionally they wend through them. All of these shapes are very organic, with soft curves and subdued colors, which is why the top-right corner of the painting strikes with more impact. It shows a very stark break in the overall composition of the painting, with sharp lines and angles in bright colors, cutting the picture off from another section of flowers.

The whole painting is highly textured, with globs of paint on the flowers, hash-marks occupying otherwise barren swathes of canvas, and obvious brush-strokes, creating a plethora of visual textures.

It is a ode to modern anarchist painting styles, with elements of floral patterns mixed in, blending the old and new seamlessly.

The next piece in the gallery is drawn directly on the wall in graphite. I'm referring to Jessie Shanks' untitled drawing of a series of overlapping circles. Many of the circles have designs drawn in them, such as planets, eyeballs, a fetus, a core projection of Earth, various space-like designs, and a quarter. It may just be that I don't have much of a background in art, but this piece simply did not speak to me. It seemed to be a mishmash of whatever the artist felt like drawing, with little to no preparation or concept, short of “I think I'll draw a bunch of circles and then draw a bunch of stuff in a few of them.”

Honestly, it looked like nothing more than a doodle in the margin of a high-school student's freshman art textbook. Considering its location between two of the stellar oil paintings in the gallery, I can only assume that the artist was attempting subversion of the gallery. If so, great job.

The next three works were all done by the same person, Bruce Stepan. The first is titled “Communion.” It depicts a snowscape in the background. Hovering over the ground, bathed in an eerie bluish werelight is a flying saucer, complete with bubble canopy. In the foreground is a fear-ridden farmer in a short-sleeved shirt, overalls, and a floppy hat, holding a katana in both hands and staring in horror at the alien who is standing in front of him, one long-fingered hand holding the katana in place. Over all of it is an eerie haze, as though the whole thing was being filmed on a camera that is slowly frosting over. The work is painted in a style reminiscent of old Hanna Barbera cartoon backgrounds like “The Flintstones,” “Wally Gator,” or “Secret Squirrel.” There are very few visible brush-strokes, and an elegant simplicity in the techniques used. It creates a perfect blend of whimsy and horror in its creepily cheerful subject matter, and is a delight to behold.

The next painting by Stepan is titled, “Annunciation.” It, like “Communion,” contains very few visible brush strokes and is intrinsically whimsical. It shows a small room with three green walls overlooking a city at night with the buildings constructed in a haphazard way, much like the city in Ralph Bakshi's “Cool World.” The room is quite cluttered, with a small table, on which sit a candlestick and glass. In the bottom-right corner sits an old TV, and throughout the room are scattered a bunch of empty beer cans. In the bottom left of the painting, sitting with his back against the wall, is a man who appears to be the reason the beer cans are empty. He is looking around with a dazed look in his eyes. Standing next to him is a man with a look of abject terror on his face, looking at the creature that just flew in through the window. The creature appears to be some sort of alien with rainbow-hued angel wings, a tank top, and daisy dukes.

Like “Communion,” “Annunciation” manages to capture a sense of whimsical horror. However, it doesn't achieve it quite as easily. It comes off as too cluttered, with too much going on. Where “Communion” is simple and elegant, “Annunciation” is overly complicated and clumsy. It is still a great testament to the artist's skill, but it just doesn't measure up to its counterpart.

The third painting by Stepan is titled “Squirt,” and depicts what I assume to be a family living in a mobile home community in the Southwestern United States. The word “cluttered” doesn't even begin to do it justice. Scattered throughout the painting are mobile homes, totem poles, pink flamingoes, cacti, palm trees, ferns, mountains, Japanese paper lanterns, picnic tables, beer cans, food of all kinds, condiments, grills, and many more items scattered around on the ground. It has all been painstakingly recreated in what by now I've begun thinking of as Stepan's “signature style.” There are three people in the center of the painting. The one to the left, sitting on a picnic table, is a pregnant woman drinking beer. The one to the right is a long-haired man who appears to be tending the charcoal grill. The center one is clearly the inspiration for the title of the piece. He is holding a mustard bottle upside down and is squirting the contents onto the ground. The painting as a whole seems to be overly embellished, with so many elements that nothing really sticks with you.

Moving along we come to the back wall of the gallery. On this are two works. The first is Michelle Vargo's ceramic “Pieces.” They have been heavily textured, painted, and glazed with several layers of color and texture to evoke coral, scales, the seafloor, tree bark, moss, and rocks. They are very natural and organic, and are quite possibly the most beautiful thing in the entire gallery. These were my favorite pieces in the entire show, and I would gladly take one home with me and give it a place of honor on the mantle.

Next to that is Karen Fisher's “Magic Carpet Ride,” an aptly-named three-panel oil painting that looks like something ripped from the minds of Steppenwolf. It's a morphic, psychedelic flow of creatures and figures in bright, almost luminescent colors. It's easily the most brightly colored piece in the gallery. Looking at this piece is like looking at a zoo through a kaleidoscope while in the head of a flower child. It's a great trip.

Moving to the east wall, we first come to Lauren Lenio's ceramic piece titled, “Society.” It consists of several ceramic houses, glazed in different colors with different textures, each of which contains a small light. It is incredibly skilled work, but conveys no emotion whatsoever. Put simply, it didn't really register as art; more like decoration.

Next to that is Daniel Rauschenbach's mixed-media sculpture, “Ursa.” When I say “mixed-media,” I mean that he mixed pretty much any media he could get his hands on. It contains steel, concrete, ceramic, wood, paint, nylon paracord, cotton, papier mache, fluorescent lights, and sound. The centerpiece of the sculpture is a 7-foot-tall steel Ferris wheel mounted on concrete. In front of that, suspended by paracord from a burned wood frame, is a large, red number 5. Below that is a fluorescent light suspended over several green ceramic human figures. Suspended from the top of the burned wood frame is a large steel mobile with papier mache balloons and cloth clouds suspended from it.

Patrons of the gallery are encouraged to spin the Ferris wheel, which creates a steel-on-steel shriek that fills the gallery with haunting echoes.

The whole piece perfectly captures the Youngstown angst, that almost palpable feeling that the world has turned its back on the Rust Belt.

The next work in the gallery also captures that angst. It's Joy White's “Grace and Jeannette.” Named for two of the blast furnaces at Youngstown Sheet and Tube, it is a series of tubes made of painted canvas sheets, wound and wired to the wall. Each of the canvas sheets is painted with shades of black, brown, orange, and red, evoking the rusted exhaust pipes of the furnaces. As they move from left to right, the tubes get wider and wider and seem to evoke a progression from past to future. It perfectly captures the Youngstown angst, while balancing it with hope for the future.

The second-to-last piece is a collaboration between Evan James, Valerie Nichols, and Derek Dickey, titled “Out of Control Jake from the Jake Jake.” It's an ink drawing on cardboard that's very reminiscent of Pink Floyd's “The Wall.” It looks like a distorted, Lovecraftian nightmare conglomerate of body parts and random items mashed together like some kind of scientific experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. In places, the front layer of cardboard is deliberately torn, revealing the riblike corrugations beneath. An almost palpable aura of disgust and horror surrounds the piece. It's a subversive, psychedelic trip that fulfills the artists' design beautifully. I love all art that makes the viewer feel strong emotions, whether positive or negative, and as such this is easily my second-favorite piece in the show.

Finally, the last work in the show is Franchesca Baldarelli's untitled mixed-media piece. It consists of masking tape, paintings, prints, and paper cutouts. My first impression of the piece was, “What in the name of sanity is going on here.” On second glance, it all came together into a pretty apt artistic representation of the city of Youngstown. The paintings and drawings are all locations in the city, the masking tape is arranged in such a way as to suggest the smashed-in leaded windows of an old, abandoned factory, and the paper cutouts look like the holes formed by steel rusting through. As the last piece in the gallery, as you move clockwise, it leaves the patron with the feeling that the rust and wreckage left behind after the mills closed have inspired a thing of beauty.