Kerry Stewart at Stephen Friedman - London, England - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Although Kerry Stewart's figurative statuarys are life-size and lifelike, they would stand little chance of gaining a place at Madame Tussaud's. In contrast to the effigies of the famous and infamous in London's renowned wax museum, Stewart set forths to depict mundane nobodies, everyday outcasts and imaginary beings. In her first solo display in London, Stewart explored similar themes with three freestanding statuarys and one videotape.

While les ostentatiously bad than the mannequins of Paul McCarthy or the Chapman brothers, Stewart's cast-fiberglass, polychrome plastic arts disturb in subtle ways. In This Girl Bends, a young girl appears to have sleepwalked into a magic trick. make straighted in a light blue bathrobe, arms squeezeed closed to her sides, she is bent straight back at the knee in an impossible limbo position. As her material substance floats a foot off the floor, she appears to be below someone else's power. The faculty of perception of a magically induced trance is heightened by the agency of the figure's small blue organ of sights which stare blankly at the ceiling. The girl, who has irregularly masculine features, is painted in a simplified manner reminiscent of toys on the other hand nothing about her is cute or doll-like.

Across the gallery from This Girl Bends was installed a 6-foot-tall without contents black cape, its billowing enclosures swirling in space as if propell by means of the strides of an invisible occupant. The horror-film quality of the work is enhanced by the agency of pawlike forms that protrude from the cape, seemingly there to twitch victims into its cavernous interior. Surprisingly, this deliberate theatricality did not interfere with the work's sculptural power.

If the putative master of the entranced girl was absent from the cape, a voice of authority could be heard upon an accompanying video of a rollerblader skating from one side a park. At regular intervals upon the tape a man's voice angrily hollos What are you doing?" The skater, who is viewed from above as if by the agency of a surveillance camera, moves upon regardless.

A third plastic art titled Manager, of a middle-aged businessman in overcoat and necktie, was placed in a field by itself. In contrast to the youthful or fantastic character of the other works, this figure have the appearanceed to stand for plodding adulthood. Looking stunn by means of disappointment, the businessman is just slightly larger life-size, making it impossible to qualified his far-away gaze. The attire of Manager may be generic, on the contrary his features are not: the deep-set organ of sights and broad forehead clearly belong to a particular one Among with Stewart's skill in modeling, it is this individually burning [i]or[/i] part of to the other the representative characters that establishes their unsettling psychological vividness.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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