Artist takes new direction with latest 'Material Evidence' show
UCLA professor presents newest exhibit at FIG
By Barbara E. Hernandez
Daily Bruin Staff
The room seems like something out of a fairy tale, with rich red velvet and long braids falling to the floor. "I chose red," says installation artist and UCLA art Professor Barbara Drucker, "because it's enticing. One moment it's saying come, the other stop."
Drucker, whose installations have shown in numerous galleries around Los Angeles and Europe, has had a change of mood in her newest exhibit at the First Independent Gallery, "Material Evidence." In her previous shows, also entitled "Material Evidence," the use of somber colors pointed to grave matters. "There was a lot about death," Drucker admits.
With her use of the color red, Drucker's new show takes a different direction. The exhibit begins with with the Samos series, "Samos/Infant", "Samos/Grave" and "Samos/Dog." The three works are objects pressed into frames, all dominantly red, above a square of astroturf with a photo winking in its core.
The astroturf seems to symbolize her life in L.A., while the red objects seem more real and a bit more scary. The photos, the only concrete images, seem to give subtle insight into the piece. The "Samos/Infant" for instance, depicts a fat and sassy baby, and above it a red baby dress almost crucified. Yet Drucker admits the work was less along the lines of crucifixion and more about a baby's frustration.
The exhibit continues with the Rapunzel-esque braids that fall off the wall into pools of darkness, hanging with hardware and magnet in different shapes and sizes. "Braids are very feminine," she says of the art form, "and very sensual."
There is something Old World vs. New World in the strict order of the braid. Long braided dark hair signifies cultures vastly different from an American one, and the idea that it can be undone or unwound is too sexually charged for many religions to allow women's hair to remain uncovered
Drucker likes that imagery. She smiles a little. "You know," she says, "I picked synthetic hair because I thought it was more truthful."
On the east wall of the gallery, "Velvet Dress/Arm" portrays the velvet arm of a dress, edged with lace, with two baby doll legs dangling from it. In Greece, says Drucker, offerings like it are made in church. "If a man hurt his leg, he would offer a leg at an icon," says Drucker. Drucker's legs are much different, with melted wax and what looks like bruises. Moving closer the viewer can see those marks aren't bruises but colored flowers.
The theme of children lingers into the next room, or world, with "Four Sisters," four seemingly empty frames set about two feet off the floor. Only when the viewer is across the room can one see the almost apparitional white dresses.
The number four surfaces again in "Material Evidence I-IV,"a series of clipboards addressing life's order and chaos in white and red.
The culmination of the exhibit lies on the floor of the main room, the masterpiece that changed Drucker's entire show. It's a braided rug, wound in different colors until it reaches more than 10 feet in diameter. At first she and her husband were determined to unravel the rug, but after hours of work Drucker had a revelation.
She was looking at the still vast homemade rug and knew it wasn't meant to be. "To me it signified potential," she says, "womb-like."
The rug does symbolize, like Georgia O'Keefe's paintings, a feminine presence and fertility. The rug being taken apart suggests its growing potential or its dwindling strength, perhaps in reproduction or power.
ART EXHIBIT: "Material Evidence" by Barbara Drucker. Now showing at the FIG Gallery until Dec. 10. For more info call Peter Kosenko at (310) 829-0345.