'November' Arrives in Knick of Time

The Atlanta Journal / The Atlanta Constitution;  Nov. 1996

Weekend Preview / Visual Arts

'November' Arrives in Knick of Time, by Catherine Fox

It's always fascinating to see your world through others' eyes, and the November Show offers just that opportunity.  Conceived three years ago by five Atlanta art mavens, this exhibition of lacal arists is juried each year by an out-of-town curator, who brings both a clean slate and a new perspective to the proceedings.

The show of 37 artists selected by Dan Cameron, senior curator of the New Museum in New York, is full of surprises, new names and not very many of the usual suspects.  Without knowing who applied and what didn't make the cut--or Cameron's personal preferences--it is impossible to get a real fix on his take on the Atlanta art scene.  But the show, whose only unifiying characteristic is diversity, is testimony that the art community is deeper and richer than the gallery scene might lead you to believe.

Photography, more prominent than last year, exemplifies the variety that typifies the exhibition.  Chris Verene displays a Diane Arbus eye for the Middle American bizarre with a formally posed wedding photo of a popeyed Midwestern bride, her groom, and towo wizened guests in all-black cowboy attire.  Rob Toedter looks to have been inspired by Spanish Baroque paintings of martyred saints--and the erotic subtext of religious images--in a dramatically lit photo that focuses attention on the rippling muscles of the straining bare body of the tortured.  In constrast, Paul Inman stays close to home in his poignant "Papa Oscura" series, family snapshots in which the figures seem to melt like candles, as a metaphor for the passage of time and dimming of memory.

Tommy Taylor looks ahead rather than back in his painting, "Century."  This rather whimsical but somehow apocalyptic fantasy features a giant red being--part machine and part winged beast--with a clown face, striding across an institutional green landscape.  But the future can't be worse than the present:  Robert Detamore's two mixed-media, multipart prints from his "Fragments" series throb with psychic pain.  the format, vocabulary and impeccably precise draughtsmanship of some passages in these complex prints will be familiar to viewers acquainted with his work, but the loose expresionsit hand that dominates here is new, and it gives the work an emotional immedac that oast works lacked.

Yes, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and Lisa Shinault tells the tail--excuse me, the tale--in her remarkable 16-foot-long enigmatic epic, "Life and Death."  The painting, affixed to a burlap backing by oversize cross-stitches, features a cast of animals--among them a dog with a unicorn horn, several weasels, and anteater and a snake--tht are interwoven with the aplomb of an embellished initial from an illuminated manuscript.  A sort of "Wind in the Willows" meets "As the World Turn," the piece is ful of twists, turns and subplots that exemplify the idiosyncratic imagination honored in this show.

The Verdict:  Full of surprises and pleasures, this juried exhibiton of Georgia artists is definitely worth a visit.