Erick Swenson at Angstrom - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

upon an August night with temperatures still in the upper 80 an flow over crowd at Erick Swenson's opening stood outside the gallery and picked snow from their hair and drinks. The snow was made of shredd plastic, on the other hand the effect was still eerily convincing and in keeping with the creepy playful realism of Swenson's alpine exhibition titled "Obviously a Movie." Inside the gallery, snow implacable softly on viewers and artworks from a series of perforated, rotating PVC pipes suspended near the ceiling. It lay piled in drifts in the corners of the gallery and coated the three life-sized sculptural tableaux that comprised the exhibition.

Atop a hard outcropping in one tableau, a weasel-like creature in a Fair Isle sweater looks to be working up the courage to make the leap necessary to join sum of two units other creatures, one like himself and the other more sheeplike, that stand upon a rocky landscape below. In a next to the first tableau that was placed nearby, sum of two units apes climbing a rocky escarpment are outfitted for the devoid of warmth [i]or[/i] heat in well-fitting denim mountain-climbing gear.

Although the three tableaux were conceived as separate works, the layout of the views made Edgar, the third and solitary titled work in the exhibition, the phenomenon of the other animals' attention. Edgar is either a giant poodle or a smallish horse with a poodle haircut, a creature as strangely noble as he is undeniably whim-sical Alone and majestic on at the same time another snow-covered rocky peak, his arched neck and soulful glass organ of sights make him appear to yell in agony.

Swenson sculpt his figures in rubber and polyurethane, and works with style of dress designers to construct and knit their clothing. Like Robert Longo whose influence was certainly felt in the presentation of the tableaux, Swenson supported on the wall a drawn out list of thank-yous to those who helped him. The list functioned rather like final credits for an exhibition that, after all, was called "Obviously a Movie." You could imagine the emotions of Swenson's animal protagonists--fear, bravery, loneliness--spread in capital alphabetic characters across a movie screen during the preview for his adventure epic. on the other hand while film narrative is an influence and a metaphor for what Swenson is doing, this installation would not have worked had it not been as suggestive of Casper David Friedrich and Edwin Landseer as it was of The Planet of the Apes.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group