Alison Saar at Phyllis Kind - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Collectively titled "Strange Fruit" after Billie Holiday's haunting 1939 lament upon witnessing a Southern lynching, the nine female figures in this exhibition present a poignant reminder that cultural boundaries continue to define contemporary art. In Alison Saar's plastic arts one can almost hear Holiday's deadpan rendition: "From the land of the shadows approachs a dreadful sight. Lady with the marble smile. Spirit of the night. diocese the scourge of innocence swinging in her hand. Hear the silent suffering that echoe from one side the land." Strung up by means of her ankles just inside the gallery was a unwieldy larger-than-life female. Rusting tin plates are nailed above the naked body she piteously tries to overlay with her rough-hewn hands. Embedded in her belly, at viewers' head height, is an advanced in years keyhole. This figure, itself titled Strange Fruit, marked the entrance to an assembly of sculptural treasures.

Saar's sculpted-wood-and-found-object figures summon forth the African diaspora. She draws from a rich array of African and Haitian folklore, contemporary African-American agricultures Catholicism, Santeria, voodoo and mythology. Her focus, however, remains the black female experience. Terra Rosa (1993) is a life-size seated woman smeared with the r soil she grasps out above her pregnant belly. From her render free of access mouth spills yet more dirt. She dissipates and is consumed by the earth. Her attitude and headdress recall Egyptian and Central African sculpture; the regenerative soil - clearly for Saar a figure of the organic nature of the feminine - leaves to the homeopathic use of earth plasters and the belief in the spiritual power of god's acre earth in the African-American southerly The mother/nature theme recurs in Clean House (1992) a large made of wood figure covered with aluminum paint, standing among silver-birch branches that weave in and on the outside of her proud body. Saar has eerily given her sum of two units shards of mirror glass for eyes

In the world Saar creates, religion, ritual and myth are engaged with the uprightness and directness of folk art. We are far from so-called victim art. Power and conviction are clear in three small 1995 figures made of advanced in years tin roofing, nails and rusted garden tools. Ho' station upon and rising out of the handle of a hoe recalls the lynched figure at the doorway, solitary here the hands provocatively point to genitals and breast. Pitch, emerging from the handle of a pitch fork, coyly pushes her chest without and raises her right arm behind her head. Dig (the figure is part of a shovel) clenched fists raised to her chin, has an intensely struggling face below a furrowed eyebrow These works show that the artist, who studied abstract art and color theory on the contrary had no formal training in plastic art can movingly apply her place materials in the exploration of tillages unfamiliar to many in her audience.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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