State of the Art?

Boston's theory-heavy artists could use a bit of practice

The state of Boston's art, it seems, can be found somewhere in a lit theory text, judging by the five representatives featured in the 19th Lois Foster Exhibition of Boston Area Artists. The artists are obsessed with materialism-teddy bears, floppy bunny rabbits, handkerchiefs, dresses, shirt pockets and other everyday objects take on a tremendous theoretical burden. Artists Yukiko Nakamura, Colleen Kiely, Juliann Cydylo, Jocelyn Lee and Amy Podmore expect us to appreciate all the tired old postmodern themes, like the redefinition of gender through art and the importance of objects in defining identity.

In the thick of all this evocation of theory, it's easy to become frustrated with the lack of innovation in Boston's art scene, especially considering that lofty gallery owners, art historians and curators chose these artists from over 100 New England artists. The chosen artists are neither original in what they want to say nor subtle in conveying it. As a result, most of their work produces a gag reflex or a bored yawn.

Nearly every work of art in the exhibit has a little didactic text from curator or artist or both hung up alongside it. Each of these is essentially the same, telling us how the piece contributes to the understanding of the individual enmeshed in the destructive forces of a materialist, male society. What really makes this annoying is that the Lois Foster Exhibition is ostensibly an even-handed survey of Boston-area art. In fact, it's a feminist art show-both the curators and all the artists were women and all these earnest bits of text ran along gender-political lines-that never comes out and calls itself a feminist art show. If it had-if all the same work had been shown, and all the same theory-heavy exegeses beside them, but it was explicitly presented as feminist-it would have been a (somewhat) better show. The viewer could have some faith that there was some kind of a central, cohesive idea behind it all. As it is, you have to wonder, given the emphasis the curators put on the theoretical implications of the pieces on display, why didn't they just publish a treatise and save us all the bother of looking at this lackluster art?

Nakamura's work, especially her skirts of square fabric stuck on wall, seems like Surrealism gone feminist-psycho mixed with attempts at cleverness gone sickeningly trite. She draws on the materials of appearance, like bas-relief shirt pockets and women's eyelashes, and claims that this is an "embodiment for emotion" using the things that mask our emotions, yet it just doesn't work. The felt shirt pockets put on a shelf merely recall the millions of other found and seemingly found objects that already call museums home.

By their very nature, ostriches and bunny rabbits on canvas should also be at least somewhat intriguing. But Kiely's provoke no response but repulsion. As another artist obsessed with producing feminist theory disguised as art, Kiely forgets that her art must be thought-provoking to generate a response. Her creations are uninteresting: her canvases are all the same size and color, white with a bit of sparkly glue thrown on them, and her colors, jarring combinations of reds, greens and blacks, vary little.

The one variable in Kiely's work is which "victim" gets to be on the canvas. One series has ostriches, while the other depicts battered stuffed animals. Kiely instructs us that she is speaking to the victims of society. The ostrich and the bunny rabbit are to Kiely misused symbols of fear and innocence. The only misused anything, however, is the canvas she wastes on what is simply boring and ugly painting.

Cydylo's work is even less innovative. She seeks, as she says in her artist's statement, "specific allusions to Victorian constraint and more generalized, surreal indications of social interaction," which translates, it seems, to lots of cut-out dresses in black and white stuck on walls. Cheap Mattisse cut-out imitations, maybe, but little more.

As for photography, we get more of the sorts of images of girls growing up too fast and women wizened too young that already saturate the art world. This didn't stop the curators from including Jocelyn Lee's work. The standard little girl wearing make-up, complete with dyed hair and a bikini, is by now tired and almost traditional. Lee presents nothing new; in fact, her contorted fruit photographs aren't even grotesque, but simply run-of-the-mill. She wishes for a contorted crab apple to signify the state of humanity in the modern world, beauty destroyed by convention and expectation. Such a perspective, unfortunately, has been taken a few too many times already, and Lee adds nothing to this overplayed theme.

There is a glimmer of hope in the form of Level Best, a sort of white plastic sculpting material which is Amy Podmore's favorite medium. Her sculpture is about the only thing zany and creative in Boston art, if we are to believe that the exhibit is truly representative. Podmore doesn't need to rely on long-winded mission statements to connect with her viewers. A sculpture reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers actually works as a statement about childhood, with two pairs of trousers, one big and one small, attached precariously by yarn.

Similarly, Podmore even manages to breathe some new life into the old complaint of postmodern isolation. She takes a teddy bear that has only eyes and ears, sews room for Level Best human arms and legs and sticks this figure on a branch of a birch tree set in a line of darker trees. The result is a poignant, even wrenching, display of innocence alone in a cold environment. Podmore's work doesn't actively attempt to be theoretical and, as a result, is not overbearing like everything else in the exhibit.

Though how these artists were chosen is quite clear, thanks to the beauty of an annual art show's bureaucracy, the reason why these artists were chosen is obscure. Besides Podmore, no artist featured shows any sort of creative innovation. If the exhibit is meant to further discussion of feminist theory, that could be done just as easily with a new book-and the Rose's wonderful museum space could be freed up for something that stands on its own as challenging and interesting.

The Lois Foster Exhibition of Boston Area Artists is on view at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, through Dec. 17. For more information, call 781-736-3434.