Installations, photographs, funeral wreaths - however eclectic your tastes, there's a good chance you'll find something that interests you in the current roster of exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery.
My favorite of the current shows is "Kadar Attia: New Work." Attia grew up within a Muslim Algerian family in the banlieue outside of Paris that are home to many immigrants.
The banlieue are unpleasant suburbs where unemployment rates are astronomical and crime is rampant. In recent years, they have been the sites of bitter riots. The emptiness, wealth/poverty, power/weakness themes that are predominant in Attia's installations and video reflect this background.
The most haunting piece is "Ghost," an assemblage of 150 life-sized, hollow aluminum-foil creations. Each was molded on a woman kneeling in prayer position. The figures are faceless and nameless. They are ephemeral and empty voids that glitter externally yet are filled with black space.
The other large installation "Rocher Carré" consists of rectangular boxes made of plasterboard. No decorations adorn them. They simply sit at various angles, row upon row of them. It's a disconcerting experience to walk between and among them. It makes one a bit uneasy, a bit claustrophobic -like an apartment building might in the banlieue. Interestingly, these desolate structures also remind the artist of the breakwaters at the slum-area beach in Algiers that he visited as a child.
A video, photographs and two smaller installations complete the show, which refers numerous times to words by the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tse: Human being create things, but emptiness gives them meaning.
"We're all going to die (except for you)" by Dawn Cerny is on view until the end of this month. Cerny, a local artist, was invited to peruse the extensive collections of the Henry Gallery and the Burke Museum and select from them objects that could be combined with her own work to create an exhibition that showed the collection in a fresh way.
She chose an eclectic variety of Victorian items associated with death and mourning practices and displayed them with her own t-shirt drawings inspired by heavy metal, gangster rap and goth.
In one of the two galleries, the mourning gowns, photographs, funereal floral pieces, and other ephemera from the late 19th century provide a rich social history on death and dying. In the other gallery one has the sense of being in a funeral home waiting room. Here, Cerny continues to work on a paper army whose members fight and die on floor space that has been reserved for them. What results is an interesting commentary on the macabre from two centuries. Overall, the effect is intellectually puzzling rather than depressing.
"Jean-Luc Mylayne" is an exhibition consisting of 30 large-format, color photographs, most taken in and around Fort Davis, Texas. Mylayne has a deep love of nature, especially its birds, and an extraordinarily creative approach to photography. Though he lives in his native France, he has spent months at a time over many years observing and photographing birds in Texas.
His is not traditional wildlife photography. He offers no greatly enlarged close-ups. His object is to document the bird in its habitat complete with the detritus and evidence of the human beings who share that living space. There's a bird in every photo, and the fun is to find the ones that are somewhat hidden.
Another thing to look for is the color red. The color red means "be alert," and there's a spot or more of red in every photo. Blue is a sign of a healthy environment. You'll see lots of blue.
Mylayne uses no telephoto lenses. Instead, he places multiple lenses at different focal points, thus controlling what's in and out of focus in the moment of time that he captures on film. His images are philosophical reflections on time, space and the natural order.
"Silver Sea, a Portfolio of Photography from Los Angeles" is another photography show, this one drawn from the Henry's fine Monsen Collection of Photography. It was assembled in 1977 to showcase the work of those who aimed at being artists rather than professionals in the fields of TV and movies. Most interesting about this exhibit is the variety of techniques used to create the images.
"The Silver See Portfolio"
continues through March 30,
Jean-LucMylayne and Dawn Cerny continue through April 27,
Kader Attia through May 25
at the Henry Art Gallery on the campus of the University of Washington,
543-2280. The Gallery is open 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Tuesdays through Sundays, Thursdays until 8 p.m.
$10 for the general public, $6 for seniors.
Members, students and children free.