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As small as the so-called art community is in Philadelphia, it is strange that there remain any barriers at all between different circles of galleries, teachers, curators, organizations, and funders. But, alas there are many. They come in the form of theoretical boundaries, trendiness, age, school affiliation, and general background. Academia is still a retreat from real life no matter how colleges tell us they are preparing students for the artworld, and teaching itself can become a retreat echoing one’s student days. So I am pleased to see excellent work by a local artist that I’ve never come across before. All it took was a visit to her solo show at Seraphin Gallery for me to notice the talent and wisdom in the works of Joan Wadleigh Curran. She is a breath of fresh air who seems to combine some very current moments in art with a topical reality while using a mature sense of craft. The paintings immediately draw one in with their combination of delicate brushwork and abject subject. Stealing the show is Possessions - New Orleans 2006-07 which depicts a huge mound of discarded trash. It is an inviting and thrilling picture. Not because of the more obvious political meaning but the treatment, where sensitively parsed objects are turned into a majestic still life which is almost classical. One sits in front of this picture and eyes move from subtle coiled and glowing green wire to orange fence plastic and splintered dead trees; a cosmic square of ordered chaos. I was reminded of low-end flea markets where piles of someone else’s garbage become treasure and the audience becomes treasure seeker. The words to describe this one piece strike me as profound as well. I find myself discussing an “abundance” of trash, whether it is the worthless refuse left over from the destruction of poor families’ homes or middle class excess, it does not matter. There are endless poetic words for this: beautiful grime, sensitive wrecks. The picture Bound makes the stance clearer as nature and the artifice of paint intertwine. Adjacent to dead environments are acrid colored non-degradable bits of everyday detritus, particularly the orange fencing which doesn’t resemble anything else in the world. Here it can be seen as a net of rolled up fence, a dissonant chord amid the matching grey of dead nature. The non-biodegradable has no defined shelf life and it will outlive us. The drawings are lovely as well, more graphic and with a somewhat less sharp metaphor. They are beautifully made images, which, in this context, become all the more dreamlike. The dead trees are the only giveaway that this is not a normal “dump” context. It is post-flood, the end of world. It is what comes after disasters. The intimation is that this condition is certainly one of our own making. Here, Curran makes a beautiful reality out of a grim ecological message. The style of painting is somewhat neutral but engaged, Stanley Spencer-ish with calm character. He would have put Noah and Katrina together in an English village with a similar discontinuity. Perhaps Katrina doesn’t need any more bleeding hearts going on about it, but it could use an artist’s treatment where it is subtly connected to wider global fears, rather than simply America’s disregard of the poor side of town. Back to InLiquid's Commentary section index © 2007 James Rosenthal and InLiquid.com; image copyright © Seraphin Gallery and Joan Wadleigh Curran |
