The gallery was a former studio of Heide Trepanier (who’ll be showing there in a few months), and has a loft installed by furniture builder Anthony Brozna. The postindustrial space, with its exposed brick and factory windows, reminds one of someplace in the arts aquarium that New York’s Chelsea has become. Except this is Richmond, and we’re a long ride on the A train.
The opening show is "Vanitas," by Boston-based artist Helena Wurzel. It’s box-in-boxes work, with deceptively simple lines and attractive colors revealing more sociocultural complexity going on.
I was reminded somewhat of Alex Katz, especially in Do I Look Expensive?, wherein a female gallery-goer takes in a big painting of a lolling, sunglassed bikini-clad woman. One observer next to me suggested that the subject, with her back to us, was looking at herself. Maybe it’s just that simple. But the title has a few meanings, not the least of which is a glimpse into the mind of the average art-gawker in a contemporary gallery wondering about the value of a piece.
A portrait, Yellow Day, shows up again in Slide Show. In the latter, the artist is presenting herself teaching a class, and in the piece there are portraits of the students represented on the wall behind them. One figure’s mouth is open, as though surprised or, Wurzel joked to me, yawning. Well, I know how those art-survey courses can be. She captures the dark room illuminated by the throw of a projector and students fighting off drowsiness.
Though oil on canvas, the larger paintings remind me of collages. Two big pieces present The Life of An Artist In Our Times. My Mac shows Wurzel at work with her computer while other women, dressed for a party, are arranged around the living room, as though mannequins, metaphors or thought balloons. Searching presents the artist hunkered down on the floor, hunting for subject matter amid magazines and books, and scattered around are boxed sets of Lost and Sex and The City, a Harry Potter volume, and a Starbucks coffee cup. Such is our contemporary world, clotted with brand names that crowd our lives. Just on the lower edge is an exhibition catalogue titled Bonnard. Pierre Bonnard, the last Impressionist and/or one of the first Modernists, is rightly or wrongly best known for his plethora of paintings of a woman in her bath. Wurzel’s Sara in Her Bath and Girls Getting Dressed seem informed by Bonnard.
And there are actual collages at the other end of the gallery and in the loft, some of them with delicate designs and indelicate titles. Darkly Dreaming is composed of multiple layers of hand-cut paper, giving it a kaleidoscopic sense. Just trying to make one of those strips would make me batty. Thinking about it is enough.
One of my favorite pieces was a simple, painterly portrait, Julia, showing a young woman with hip, nerdy glasses in profile wearing a military-style, visored hat. Julia herself was there, and I got to see her interact with her painted self. (And I took a video of it, seen below.) There’s a public viewing tonight, and, she says, maybe she’ll bring the hat.
