Taking comfort in pearls and bombs
The programmers of Des Moines’
art scene are now working in Metamorphic
Code. Just look what they’ve done
to August. During its first 150
Augusts, the arts communities
in this city shut down like a
French bureaucracy. One art critic
wrote that the Iowa State Fair
was the only cultural thing happening
here between the opera season
and the fall. Just a few years
ago, Iowa galleries didn’t bother
opening new exhibitions between
mid July and September. This year,
six smashing new shows have reinterpreted
August and the local art scene.
Fred Truck is a thoughtful iconoclast
whose work is deadly serious humor.
“Ten Year Sandwich,” at Heritage
Gallery through September 18,
includes some of his best takes
on corporate images, individualism,
war and terror. All intertwine
in his exploration of identity
and its dissolution. In a bomb
series, Truck arranged sculptures
in a medicine cabinet — because
“terrorists believe that a bomb
can make everything well.” The
artist noted while observing the
Enola Gay and Big Boy exhibition
at the Smithsonian, that early
atom bombs were quite imperfect
showing hammer dents on their
skin.
“They were just handmade items
— they were a lot like art,” Truck
said.
Former Des Moines painter Anthony
Pontius is another original stylist
who meditates on war and the way
it’s perceived. His “Casual Calamity”
at Moberg Gallery includes “every
available painting in America”
by the artist after his successful
exhibitions in New York City,
Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington
D.C. this year. In Pontius’ hands,
technique becomes symbolic. He
lays “fat paint over lean paint,
intentionally painting badly”
in his words — so that his paint
will chip prematurely, effecting
an Old Master’s look on which
he scribbles, doodles and assaults
with green shoots, sun rays, Mardi
Gras streamers and other statements
of youthful hope. Moberg curators
included Pontius’ preliminary
sketches with his paintings showing
how the artist reworks a concept.
On landscapes, which almost always
look like battlefields or concentration
camps, “Bubble Gum Cowards” morph
into piles of amputated limbs
and the Statue of Liberty’s torch
changes into Medusa’s severed
head.
“I really don’t mean to be intentionally
ironic. I just can’t help but
go there sometimes,” Pontius explained.
Also at Moberg, a “New Artist
Exhibit” shows off bright, gypsy
abstractions from Therésè
Murdza, Heather Brammeier and
Diane Henk; sunny realism of Larassa
Kabel and the dark wonderland
of Mary Kline-Misol. Both Moberg
shows play through September 19.
Dan McNamara exhibits his latest
Jade Buddha meditations on universes
within riverbanks at Olson-Larsen
Galleries through Aug. 29. An
out of state museum director once
told me that this most stylized
of Iowa’s landscape artists possesses
“astonishing vision that would
dominate an exhibition, if the
nature of his vision was not so
peaceful.” Om to that. Abstractions
from Jeanine Coupe Ryding and
animal prints from Paula Schuette
Kraemer complement McNamara’s
serenity in this current show.
At 2Au, Ann Au explained the subject
of her dazzling show “Pearls”
playing through August. “They
are comforting. They are warm,
you can fondle them and they go
with everything, with or without
color. They become part of the
body. I suppose that’s why they
were associated with the 1930s
and why they are comforting today.”
At Des Moines Social Club (DMSC),
Michelle Holly has gathered the
most eccentric flock of artists
seen here in years for “Animal
Nature” through Aug. 29. Several
of these artists have professional
names befitting an underground
venue — Bosko, Macix, Rudy Fig,
Netherland, M@r$h, Kettlefart,
etc. Some go for double entendre
jokes like Macix’s “Shaved Beaver”
and others for the shock value
of anthropomorphic animals (Christopher
Umana, Rudy Fig), parasitic insects
(John Stuart Berger), teddy bears
on crack (Chris Bent), mythological
hybrids (Jeremiah Kettner) and
Kafkaesque nightmares (Jason Scott
Hoffman). At DMSC they hang their
hats on the same rack as more
traditional artists like Vanja
Borcic and Jamie Fales, who contributed
a meticulous triptych of Keane-like
girls modeling living hat wear.
CV
