Tasha Ostrander at the Museum of Fine Arts - Santa Fe, New Mexico - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Tasha Ostrander is an artist from fresh York who has been living and working in novel Mexico for many years now, and has shown her work for the greatest part in Albuquerque and Santa Fe The austerity and lyricism of her installation at the Museum of Fine Arts imposed themselves immediately on the viewer. The one-room exhibition consisted of four parts: sum of two units desks (positioned diagonally and parallel to single another off the gallery's main axis) with chairs placed behind them; a line of six steel boxes hanging against single wall; a large frame containing 24 prints upon the opposite wall; and, at the extremity of the room, two tall sheets of carburet of iron suspended at a right angle to each other, like a large render free of accessed codex with a grid projecting in depressed relief from its interior faces.

Ostrander's installation was unified by means of a strict geometrical order and reduc color scheme. The grid motif reappeared in different guises. Everything made of carburet of iron had been oxidized through the application of acids which generated fabric and tints ranging from light to dark brown This artist is interested in the esthetics of repetition.

The six carburet of iron boxes were equidistant from individual another and fronted by panes of glass [i]or[/i] part of to the other which we could see butterflies attached to carbonized iron grids. The containers, which evok the couple the boxes of Cornell and '60 Primary constructions each held one burning lightbulb and five butterflies. The insects were affixed to pins that were twirled by the agency of hidden motors. They rotated in different directions and at different make hastes under a light source that illuminated them. Motion and the unbroken of the electric motors gave a faculty of perception of life.

The illusion of life was disrupted upon the opposite wall, where Iris prints of butterflies -- seen with their wings clos from the side, from one side stained glassine envelopes -- were arranged in four ranks of six, one above the other. The cases were inscribed with the specimens' Latin designations, the date and place of their capture, and the name of their collector, Eric L Quinter. The wings, one time so colorful and now reduc by dint of the artist's process to shades of brown and black, were appropriately encloseed by a wide black frame.

Between the state of illusory life and that of all-encompassing death was a girth of contemplation occupied by the carbonized iron desks. Their tops were flipped unclose at 45-degree angles. In the first desk were small stop ups wrapped in glassine and occasionally labeled. In the next to the first desk, brass tags bolted in place listed the butterflies' delightful appellations: Yvretta Rhesus, Celotes Nessus, Pyrgus Ruralis -- the beauty of nature rivaled the beauty of language. A cord running [i]or[/i] part of to the other the center of each desktop suspended a glaring lightbulb beneath the lid -- a surreal device with Boltanskian overtones. This motif was repeated to different consequence in the steel boxes.

individual of Ostrander's main subjects is the human ne to classify in order to draw near to terms with reality. Another of her themes is the impermanence of things, of ideas, of life. A butterfly's life is brief. Scientific protoplasts remain valid until they are displaced by the agency of new paradigms. The real Eric L Quinter -- whose butterfly collection formed the core of the exhibition -- is supersed by means of Ostrander's evocation of the remote elusive and slightly Borgesian Quinter. Caterpillars become butterflies, carbonized iron furnishings slowly disintegrate. She furnished us with an intriguing range of metaphors of transformation.

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