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Sight Scene: 'Animalia' at Irvine Contemporary

AFTER A SELECTION PROCESS that ran longer than a year, Irvine Contemporary's associate director, Heather Russell, has assembled "Animalia" — a show featuring artists who use animals as principal elements in their work. The show, which opened last Friday, brings to mind the parting lines of Puck in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Excusing the bad behavior of he and his cohorts, Puck begs pardon for "this weak and idle theme/no more yielding but a dream." The concept behind "Animalia" is at least as simple — animals in contemporary art — and it happens upon similarly fantastical moments of comedy, mischief and dark portent.

One work even bears a superficial resemblance to the Bard's beloved half-ass, half-man: Carlee Fernandez's "Bear Head Study I," a digital C-print, shows the artist, nude from the waist up, wearing only the head of a bear costume. The photograph hangs midway through the gallery, an important midpoint in a show that (broadly speaking) grows darker as the viewer moves from the entrance through the exhibit.

Russell has taken care to arrange the show in such a way to make this progression obvious, beginning with two Disneyesque installations by Sandra Bermudez. One of those — "Little Birds," a flock of laquered-clay birdies with press-on eyelashes resting on several towers of pillows — hints at the vagaries of marriage and childhood depictions of commitment. Intimacy figures into the works of several artists in the show, including the aforementioned Fernandez and Peregrine Honig, whose fairy figurine drawing "Uniporn Fornicorn," seen here, is beset by stars and butterflies delicately tendered in watercolor, ink and gouache.

Perhaps in no work is intimacy more clearly at stake than in the single video piece in the show: "Everything Tastes Better When You Are Blind" by Adam Stennett. In this work, at left, a couple (the artist and his beautiful blonde date) enjoy a lovely meal, complete with a dessert course of strawberries and cream, glass after glass of red wine, a post-prandial coffee digestif — and dozens of white mice. The critters scurry over the dishes, crawl into the nooks and crannies of the woman's dress, and nibble impolitely at the dinner offerings, as all the while the couple flirts, flashing suggestive glances at one another.

Video tends to command attention among painting and sculpture, but Stennett's is not the standout piece in the show. That honor goes to Tricia Cline for "Ganesh Riding Pervader," a sculpture of the elephant-headed Hindu god riding a gigantic three-legged horse whose name refers to Aswa, a nymph who took the form of a mare (and whose name translates as "the pervader").

Cline's piece, above, illustrates animal imagery — an entire symbol system, even — without bending it into a strictly personal reference.

A number of works are hung throughout Irvine's office space, and it should be said that the theme wears a little thin here. After Ken Henricksen's "Birds of Prey," a mixed-media painting in which American eagles bearing dark, disguised figures soar like fighter jets across a black linen sky, the grab-bag of works in the office seem like an addendum to the show. Among these, though, are three minor pieces by some of the major Pop artists of our era: Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.

Representing three generations of Pop Art, these three anchor the exhibition in an important, if casual, sense. More central to "Animalia" than the animals themselves is the taxonomy of Pop Art that the show illustrates. Viewers can even trace the familial trees: from Warhol to Faile, Murakami to Dalek, and Koons to Cline. The animal concept peters out as a connective thread — the show is overhung, with many works hanging where a couple would represent the artist well. And it's not conclusively revealing as to how animal themes work any differently than other symbols widely practiced by artists. It's nevertheless a thorough presentation of Pop Art, down to the genus and species, and that variety lends Animalia's "idle theme" real heft.

» Animalia at Irvine Contemporary, through July 29; 1412 14th St. NW; 202-332-8767; Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. and by appointment (Dupont Circle, McPherson Square)

Source: Capps, Kriston, Sight Scene: "Animalia" at Irvine Contemporary, Express: A Publication of the Washington Times, Free Ride, June 23, 2006.