Michele Blondel at Tyler Galleries, Temple University, and Elga Wimmer - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New York, New York

In her remarkable plastic arts and installations, the French artist Michele Blondel re-creates the atmosphere of a Catholic childhood. She summon forths the hard wooden kneelers, the mystery of the confessional, the rather cold wetness of the holy water spring the opulent vestments and greatest in quantity of all the sweetly voluptuous guilt for sins which may exist alone as half-formed desires. Proving that interdictions against unacceptable meditations may serve only to detain them more persistently in mind, Blondel playfully explores the forbidden side of Catholic sensuality. In the proces she illuminates Catholicism's peculiar pairing of physical mortification and religious ecstasy.

Together these sum of two units exhibitions suggested the full range of Blondel's interests. Work from the mid-to-late '80 was featured at Tyler while Wimmer's downtown novel York space showcased recent plastic arts The earlier work tends to be more abstract, employing unexpect juxtapositions of forms and materials. single of the most striking works at Tyler was Cages and Balls (1988) which consists of large blown-glass fluid vesicles clustered within three stacked carburet of iron cages. Wired to the top of each cage are sum of two units long steel lances honed to dangerous-looking points. The organic fluidity of the bubbles' forms and the fragility of the glass played not upon the geometric rigidity of the cages and the potential brutality of the steel

In Blondel's more novel works at Wimmer, sexual relations and religious symbols become more explicit. In single piece, "guillotine boxes" with sliding doors encase shrines to saints and devoted figures. Each box at hands a group of three blown-glass utensils one tall and phallic, its flanking partners depressed and round, suggesting both breasts and testicles. These groupings are encloseed by the usual paraphernalia of Catholic worship: figurines of saints, prayer volumes gloves, votive candles. Other works hunt the conflation of carnal and spiritual desire. Particularly amusing is Ejaculation Competition, in which five bottle of thick white antiwrinkle cream are locate on pedestals so that their squirters are aimed toward a plant of white glass vessels several feet away. Here the carnival shooting game becomes a metaphor for the power of belief.

sum of two units works dominated the Wimmer display God Is Love (1992) center upon a wooden church bench. Embroidered house of god vestments are draped over the forehead of the bench with glass globes and vials nestl among their pen s Viewed from behind, however, this aura of peaceful sensuality is throw downed by the appearance of shards of shattered glass orbs scattered above kneelers appended to the seatbacks. Pleasure and pain reassert themselves as flip sides of the Catholic experience. The other large work, Communicant (1987) features a carburet of iron rack from which lacy white baptismal and communion gown hang, fluttering like banners of soon-to-be-defiled purity.

although Blondel focuses on Catholic inconography, her message transcends any particular school Arriving in the U at a time when certain factions have the appearance intent on purging life and art of all that have the appearances to them corrupt and disruptive, Blondel reminds us of the step to which purity and its opposite are intertwined.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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