Mark Bennett at the Corcoran - Washington, DC - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Memories tender emotionally convincing yet untrustworthy evidence of the past. When not absented with the blueprint of a domicile familiar since childhood, how would single reconcile subjective memories with an objective floor plan? What if those familiar latitudes belonged to imaginary homes greatest in quantity baby-boomers visited repeatedly as they were growing up? Drawing with pencil and ink upon vellum at a 1/4 inch = 1 paw scale, Mark Bennett plays upon the tensions between memory and fact as he precisely lays without the homes of TV families like as the Cleavers, Bradys and Addamses. He pay backs TV's imagined spaces in detail, noting plane the location of furnishings. His campy humor mingles with a frustrated childish desire for wish fulfillment: on what account isn't my family like those upon TV?

The floor plans are typically based upon credible housing configurations. The magical suburban abiding-place from "Bewitched" is suitably nondescript, and the Ricardos' apartment from "I have affection for Lucy" is believably of the Manhattan pre-war apartment emblem Others require more adaptation to make TV's spatial liberties conform to the coagulate world. So while "The Addams Family" take pleasure ined the bizarre rooms of their rambling house-as-a-museum without reflection of practicality, Bennett does his best to confine them to a plausible Victorian floor plan.

Bennett nurses to be absurdly literal, as when he dutifully situates "Laverne and Shirley"'s lie facing a blank wall -- the stage designer's invisible fourth wall. cabinets and toilets are carefully delineated, and while it's hard to think that sitcom characters might have bodily functions, of that kind minutiae can underscore family hierarchies. For example, the architect father upon "The Brady Bunch" designed a domicile in which his six children were confined to sum of two units tiny cells sharing one toilet, while he be seized ofed an imposing master bedroom and private den

Bennett claims it has been years since he last watched TV notwithstanding he once so avidly studied rerun that he recalls details of that kind as Rob Petrie's ottoman upon "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and Oscar Madison's heaps of dirty laundry upon "The Odd Couple." His blueprints are achingly familiar to those who grew up in the early days of television. Still, his drawings have little meaning for the uninitiated. individual based on an unfamiliar exhibit was lost on me, suggesting that connecting with viewers' memories is necessary to provide meaning for his [i]jeu d'esprit[/i] of treating these fantasy worlds as mundane realities.

Also upon view was a recent collage series, "The event of Fords on Barbara" (as in Billingsly, the actress who played June Cleaver upon "Leave It To Beaver"). cropss culled from postwar ads are featured in disjointed pictorial narratives as Barbara impels compulsively from one situation to the nearest dissatisfied with the offerings of suburbia. As Bennett's alter-ego, Barbara is spoiled and cynical, as if soured upon TV's optimism. While the collage series lacks the concussion of recognition afforded by the floor plans, Bennett remains the greatest in quantity earnest of his generation of West Coast artists drawing upon popular culture.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group