ARTS . Arts Picks

Alison Saar

April 20-Aug. 5, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, 200 South Madison St., Wilmington, Del.


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Published: Apr 17, 2007

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When she was in high school, artist Alison Saar helped her conservator father with his restoration work, and gained a hands-on understanding of the mediums and materials of ancient Egyptian, pre-Columbian and African art. Her own work, which she's been exhibiting since the 1980s, is full of these influences. Saar explores contemporary struggles (racism, sexism and the violence associated with each) through the use archetypal imagery, evoking human evolution at its coarsest. Her materials — bronze, lead, wood, tar and wire — suggest themes of human violence, labor and innovation, and the forms she creates (cast-iron pans imprinted with the faces of black women, or a woman hanging upside down, her hair literally "sweeping" the floor) point to the symbiotic relationship between them.

With such a spectacular array of sculpture, it's not surprising that Saar's prints have slipped under the popular radar. But a new exhibition at the DCCA aims to change all that. "Duped: Prints by Allison Saar" features 20 woodblocks, etchings and monotypes by the artist, and demonstrates what happens when she forsakes the chainsaw (her favorite tool) for the chisel. Snake Man, whose three-dimensional equivalent was on view in the White House during the Clinton administration, depicts a male bust with a snake in his mouth, seemingly muted by this highly charged archetypal symbol. In Black Snake Blues, a woman lies in bed with an actual black snake (not its sexual counterpart), holding her breast and looking bored. These images are almost playfully literal, but shocking nonetheless. Maybe those ancient archetypes haven't lost their meaning after all.

April 20-Aug. 5, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, 200 South Madison St., Wilmington, Del., 302-656-6466, www.thedcca.org.