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Robin Rice on Visual Art: "Obama-rama" and "Guilty Pleasures" at Projects Gallery

by Robin Rice

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Painter Frank Hyder, whose wife runs Projects Gallery, and printmaker Allan L. Edmunds, founder and president of the Brandywine Workshop, came up with the concept of "Obama-rama" when talking about the spate of art production related to our new commander in chief. The hope and excitement radiating from this presidency echoes the almost beatified status once enjoyed by George Washington, a reverential aura depicted in Elizabeth Bisbing's Obama of Mercy. The small gouache collage incorporates traditional European imagery including angels drawing back curtains of bunting to reveal the sacred figure.

The Obama phenomenon is so striking that at least one other venue, Sande Webster Gallery, is featuring a similar concept, "Yes We Did: An Obama Celebration." And let's not forget that it's Black History Month.

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Local artists were notified of the Projects show by word-of-mouth, and most works were made especially for it. Anti-Obama pieces were not banned, but there aren't any. Many, though, are relatively neutral comments on politics. Cheryl Harper's caricature Count on Me Obama Bank of stoneware painted with acrylic (pictured) is flanked by a Hillary sphinx emphasizing the conventions of rivalry rather than the greatness of Obama. Tom Judd's Yes We Can Obama, painted on hinged panels, is a generic politician who can wave to the crowd with an unwavering painted smile. The most abstracted vision is Henry Bermudez's Obamaobama, an attractive, narrow openwork hanging composed of the encrypted, elaborated letters: OBAMA.

Frank Hyder's portraits, Fifty States of Obama, are all based on a single photograph. Hyder depicts the prez as a Lincoln clone, a grinning devil and just a guy with big ears — a summation of the range of public responses.

On the openly partisan and hopeful side, James Dupree lavishes rich iconography, colors and glitter in a way that suggests celebratory fireworks. In the lithograph 200 Years, Allan L. Edmunds interpolates text and images, like a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. and the diagram of a slave ship, to suggest Obama's significant place in history. Jim Brossy's No Imperialism, a large assemblage of carefully manipulated and painted trash pickings, makes a straightforward political statement against war and torture.

The Coming of the Light, a photograph of Obama in Philadelphia by Raymond W. Holman Jr., and Vivian Wolovitz's fusing of Obama's portrait with Abraham Lincoln's also acknowledge what so many feel is a redemptive moment in American history.

Although Projects (wisely) says its "Guilty Pleasures" show is for adults only, it doesn't really shock. Responses to the national open call suggest that people hide their real sources of guilt behind the contemporary obsession with sex. Surely smoking, depicted by Mat Tomezsko, and candy, represented in Craig Cully's delicious 49 Kisses, must be the tip of the iceberg of deep, shameful guilt (and maybe the kisses are really about sex anyway, as is Katie Latona's embroidered reference to sandwiches).

Some work in the show seems to be straightforward, well-executed porn; others, like Bill Bahmermann's Moral Compass, are antiseptically preserved, reconstituted and buffed to a high gloss. Orly Cogan's embroidered Night Rider has vintage charm and careful stitches suggesting a kind of intimacy. A few items are fall-down funny: Rob Millard Mendez's Briefs with Built in Negative Reinforcement are made of mousetraps, while Andy Bloxham's photograph showcases a young man in bed with a limpish inflatable doll and a stethoscope. On the other hand, John "Sleepy" Moran's Freedom jumps off the wall with heart-stopping intensity that is hard to forget.

Clay artist Jack Thompson's serene, biologically impossible, incestuous Siamese (Conjoined) Twins are more than mythic; they remind us that Thompson's work has been the target of censorship in the past. Indeed, a symposium at the Institute of Contemporary Art this week recalls the nationwide discussion of pornography ignited 20 years ago by its Mapplethorpe retrospective. Things have changed since then and adult sex of all kinds is acceptable, even on Oprah. I doubt anyone will complain about the Projects show.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

"Obama-rama"/"Guilty Pleasures" | Through Feb. 28, Projects Gallery, 629 N. Second St., 267-303-9652, projectsgallery.com