A Hand Up

A new show at ICA brings puppets out of storage and into the limelight.

by Mary Wilson

OSTRICH SIZED: A still from Guy Ben-Ner's video Elia: A Story of an Ostrich Chick (2003). The 29 artists in ICA's "The Puppet Show" explore the impact of puppets in contemporary art. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Puppets have got a long history of artistry and entertainment, but it's not every day they set up shop at a contemporary art gallery. That's why "The Puppet Show" at ICA is a rare treat.

The group exhibition studies the impact of puppets in contemporary art, bringing together 29 international artists working in a variety of media, including sculpture, installation, drawing and video. These artists are engaged not only with the craft of puppetry, but with the themes of power, control and political agency that puppets evoke.

Curated by ICA's Ingrid Schaffner and Carin Kuoni, director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, "The Puppet Show" blurs the lines between exhibition and performance, sculpture and theater. Visitors enter the show by way of a structure called "puppet storage," which contains shelves full of artists' work, studio materials, videos and historical puppets. Exiting this small room as if emerging from backstage, they will be confronted with the lights and sounds of a theatrical art installation conceived, along with "puppet storage," by artist Terrace Gower.

Gower sought to make the show itself an installation, designed to highlight puppetry's theatrical roots. In the main room of the exhibition, various booths display video art and other oddities, giving the whole affair the feeling of some bizarre traveling show or Coney Island-esque theme park. A central platform, lit up as if it were a stage, contains the bulk of the three-dimensional work, including puppet-themed sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Nayland Blake and Maurizio Cattelan, among others.

There's plenty to see, but Dennis Oppenheim's "Theme for a Major Hit" is perhaps the real showstopper. Oppenheim's identical marionettes are each the image of their maker, made with a cast of his own face. Controlled mechanically from above, the figures gyrate uncomfortably to a song written by Oppenheim himself, with the lyrics "It ain't what you make, it's what makes you do it."

But why puppets? For Schaffner, the impetus was largely personal. "This show ultimately stems from Pittsburgh, where I'm from, and which is a real puppet town. I grew up going to Margo Lovelace's marionette theater — one of the few dedicated puppet theaters in America. It instilled a sense of puppetry that extended beyond children's theater to its European and Asian traditions."

Despite its personal relevance, says Schaffner, this exhibition "has everything to do with the work of contemporary artists." Its historical starting point is a film adaptation of Alfred Jarry's 1896 play Ubu Roi, which was originally conceived as a puppet show about a fictional king's reign of terror. Directed by South African artist William Kentridge, "Ubu and the Truth Commission" is a multimedia theatrical production that addresses the networks of power and oppression in South Africa's apartheid regime.

Whether it takes the form of filmed performances or animation, video plays a large role in "The Puppet Show." It is here that the performative nature of puppetry — rooted as it is in the duality of controller and controlled — really makes itself apparent. This theme often appears conceptually, as in Matt Mullican's "Live Under Hypnosis." In this hour long video, Mullican performs on stage while presumably hypnotized, painting, shouting and crawling around on the floor while a visibly uncomfortable audience looks on. On a different note, Kara Walker's shadow-puppet animations explore power as it relates to race, class and gender, particularly through narratives of American slavery.

Other videos in the exhibition take a more humorous tone, seeking to subvert the notions of puppetry as children's entertainment. Most notably, Guy Ben-Ner's "Karaoke" features the artist's penis "dressed up" with two stick-on eyes, performing a lip-synched (so to speak) rendition of Connie Francis' "Lipstick on Your Collar."

For those who just want a good old-fashioned puppet show, ongoing exhibition programming will include a night of performances curated by Philadelphia's own Beth Nixon of Ramshackle Enterprises, featuring Eric Ruin, Fence Kitchen, Shoddy Puppet Company and Clare Dolan. There will also be artist lectures and films, including a special screening of Laurie Simmons' "The Music of Regret," starring Meryl Streep as a ventriloquists' dummy.

(m_wilson@citypaper.net)

"The Puppet Show", Jan. 18-March 30, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 118 S. 36th St., 215-898-7108, icaphila.org.