September 16-22, 2004

art

Witch Crafts

welcome to the funhouse: Swenbeck turned a German pagan folktale into a haunted house full of pop culture humor and Gothic imagery. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Paul Swenbeck makes art out of nightmarish myths.

by Lori Hill

"I was the cleanup kid," says artist Paul Swenbeck. Growing up in Salem, Mass., Swenbeck was given the unceremonious duty of mopping up the "dungeon" of the Witch Dungeon Museum, a local tourist trap.

He was 14 and says he was "really scared."

And decades later, the experience still haunts him, so to speak.

This month, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has given him the opportunity to work out all his fears and memories and fascination with the occult in the confines of its Morris Gallery. He's taking full advantage.

Walk into the space, and you'll be taken on a goofy, funhouse ride through Swenbeck's Technicolor imagination. Towering in the left center is a silver, foil-covered tripod that looks like something out of The Blair Witch Project. Perched on the contraption are ceramic woodland fantasy creatures of all shapes and sizes, swilling magic potions and huffing on an orgone box. The soundtrack to this tableau is a things-that-go-bump-in-the-night loop of people banging on cans and generally "making a ruckus," says Swenbeck. "It's supposed to be a party scene." Near the back wall, a resin-and-foam life-size skeleton is splayed out on the floor, arms akimbo and legs bowed, its mouth a ghastly rictus. It's been consumed and spat out by the giant resin blob that has overtaken the room behind it, spilling out into the hallway outside the gallery. The most conventionally beautiful part of the installation are the sharp, intensely colored shadows cast by Plexiglas shapes hanging from the ceiling — witches fleeing to a special gathering place.

Juvenile? Sure. Humorous? Yep. But the installation — "Specter of the Brocken," opening this weekend — also draws on dark mythological themes that have slowly seeped their way into Swenbeck's aesthetic sensibilities.

The exhibit takes its name from a German pagan myth in which climbers on the Brock peak in the Harz Mountains saw their own reflections floating above them in clouds or fog. Terrified climbers, thinking the images were witches gathered at the peak, often fell to their deaths. The ceramic "spirit creatures" partying on the tripod derive from the Norse myth of the Wild Hunt, in which demons and spirits rage through the forests and kill everything in sight. The resin blob runs scared from these demons and invokes, according to the artist, the evil gelatinous cube in the game Dungeons & Dragons by spitting out the shocked skeleton.

"Specter" is actually a culmination of years of Swenbeck's experiments with this melding of pop culture and Gothic themes. It's his most fully realized attempt to capture the sort of manufactured fright employed by haunted houses and amusement parks. In 2002, Project Room hosted an exhibit called "Ostara" by Swenbeck and his wife, artist Joy Feasley. The title's a reference to a pagan holiday, and the two re-created a Salem domestic interior infused with demonic symbolism and stereotypical colonial imagery (pitchforks, candles).

This exhibit takes it all much further, inspired by everything from those Wild West shooting galleries on the boardwalk to heavy metal imagery to the aforementioned Dungeons & Dragons. Swenbeck loves that "there's a cheesy quality to it, but with a little bit of illusion too."

In fact, from the materials to the sound to the lighting, everything about "Specter" feels completely created, wholly artificial. The visitor will sense the artist's witty hand on all of the pieces. The synthetics range from the DayGlo paint drawings to the reproduction orgone box based on the writings of Wilhelm Reich to the hand-cut, wildly reflected Plexiglas ghosts. PAFA curator Alex Baker calls this artsy-craftsy approach a "hobbyist aesthetic." He adds that he tapped Swenbeck for the Morris show after "Ostara" at Project Room "solidified in my mind what he could do with a 3-D space." Baker says, "What's really interesting about his work is that it skirts across many different media, drawing, sculpture, installation, ceramic work. He does each medium really well and [it makes for] a unified expression."

The unassuming Swenbeck, about two weeks into installing the work, eagerly pulls out pieces of the installation from cardboard boxes and points out where they'll end up in the space. A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, the artist's reputation in Philadelphia and beyond is growing. Just in recent months, he's participated in a show at the Basekamp collaborative, contributed a piece to the ICA's "The Big Nothing" exhibition and shown in the same Morris space as part of the Altoids' "Curiously Strong" Collection. Since arriving in Philly in 1994, Swenbeck's worked with Vox Populi, LURE and Space 1026 to name a few. "It's a great place to be an artist," he says. "I'm very rah-rah Philadelphia."

Besides hoping to take "Specter" to another venue, Swenbeck's not sure what lies ahead. But certainly his unique take on mythology and folklore has infinite possibilities — as long as there are visually inspiring legends and spooky folktales, he'll tackle them.

"I do a lot of research, but it's more image-driven than story-driven. I'm not looking for a narrative," he says. "It's pop culture references, so it doesn't run that deep anyway. I'm not a theorist. I like to take people's stories and make new stories out of them."

"Specter of the Brocken," opening reception Fri., Sept. 17, 6-8 p.m., exhibit runs through Nov. 21, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad and Cherry sts., 215-972-7600. Artist's lecture, Thu., Sept. 30, 11:30 a.m., free.