Dual Diagnosis

Robin Rice on Visual Art | The Hermaphrodites: Living in Two Worlds

by Robin Rice

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Published: Mar 23, 2010

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Leslie Ferrin, of Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield, Mass., conceived "The Hermaphrodites," now at Wexler Gallery, as a premise for presenting sculpture that could be categorically confusing in terms of materials and execution. The pieces in this show might be described as decorative art or fine art. Most also address human physiological ambiguity, perhaps as a metaphor for all dilemmas of duality.

Ferrin mixes things up in every way. Although it can all be called ceramic, the work does not confine itself to clay. Jason Briggs' Peach resembles a gigantic netsuke (Japanese carved toggle) of porcelain, hair and stainless steel, all presented on a velvet stand. The fleshy colors and rounded shapes are pretty if you can ignore an undeniable creep-out factor in the suggestion of unidentifiable organs, body hair and what look like sutures. Something here demands thought, and that's one hallmark of serious art. "Decorative" art is mostly noticed because it's, well, decorative.

Equally challenging to boundaries, Chris Antemann's Wardrobe is an oversize version of Meissen porcelain figurines decorated with flowery fire-on decals and gold. The elegant scene depicts two figures seated at a tea table in an alcove framed by rococo fronds. Wearing makeup, pearls and dainty undergarments, the coquettish pair look more like cross-dressers (or undressers) than hermaphrodites. Whatever, some details are too graphic for Meissen.

Large prints of Kendrick Moholt's appealing photographs documenting Wardrobe — as a whole and in detail (pictured) — are the first things you see in the show. They should be recognized as artworks in their own right (Moholt is credited, but not listed as an artist). By obscuring scale and reverently documenting their subject, these images add a thought-provoking layer of historical and conceptual ambiguity.

Cynthia Consentino's stoneware Undivided addresses the hermaphrodite concept directly with a figure that combines male and female into one naked body with two legs, two self-caressing arms and two heads that are kissing. Set in a stylized natural environment against a small tree, like Antemann's sculpture, it plays with the conventions of mantel-piece figurines.

Tip Toland's delicately painted, highly realistic naked reclining hermaphrodite, perhaps writhing in the throes of sexual pleasure, is one of the more disturbing works. In contrast, tiny interlocking genitals concealed in mated planes of Irina Zaytceva's richly glazed and overglazed Cat's Cradle seemed to strike viewers as more amusing than appalling.

In a minimal and abstract mode, Judy Fox's five painted terra-cotta shapes are certainly sexual and ambiguous, but what they represent is not clear. Similarly self-contained, Sergei Isupov's slip glazed and stained heads are soulful but perhaps not definitive of human hermaphrodites.

When Oscar Wilde said that he found it "harder every day to live up to my blue and white china," he probably wasn't ready for the challenge of Red Weldon Sandlin's blue underglazed Me and My Shadow, based on the Peter Pan character, or for Jason Walker's A Hand in Two Worlds. Both artists draw (literally) on the tradition of blue-and-white pictorial plates and vases, although each appropriates traditional china decoration in an individual way. The pieces are descendants of the vessel tradition, but, like the reproductive organs of human hermaphrodites, they are not designed to be functional. By adding nonceramic materials, each artist further questions expectations of "normalcy" in a superficially familiar format. Like much in this show, Sandlin's and Walker's work invites us to notice and perhaps question the assumptions that everyday objects project onto our lives.

In recent decades, the idea of a clear-cut distinction between decorative art and fine or "high" art has been rejected by many artists, theorists and curators. The recent "Dirt on Delight" exhibition of ceramic sculpture at the Institute of Contemporary Art here pointedly ignored such a dichotomy. Ferrin clearly questions it. Are we also to take from this hermaphroditic show the concept that sharp gender distinctions are similarly artificially imposed? It's something to think about.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

The Hermaphrodites: Living in Two Worlds Through May 1, Wexler Gallery, 201 N. Third St., 215-923-7030, wexlergallery.com

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