VCU Anderson Gallery hosts summer exhibitions

By Tom Gresham

Visitors will encounter the mesmerizing power of a single line, the disheartening potential for violence in a group and the myriad ways that portraits discover their subjects in the multifaceted Summer Exhibition that opens at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Anderson Gallery on June 20.

In the gallery’s front room, “Thread in the Labyrinth” features examples of Fiona Ross’ intricate single-line drawings, including her first site-specific wall installation in the style. Also downstairs is “Knoxville Girl,” a collection of Rob Matthews’ grim narrative drawings that are based on a real murder in Knoxville, Tenn., and on the Appalachian ballad, “Knoxville Girl.” And the second-floor exhibition, “Portraits: More than Just a Pretty Face,” which is curated by VCU museum studies students, employs works from a wide range of sources to demonstrate portraiture’s possibilities.

Ross’ single-line, or unicursal, drawings defy belief. At once epic and intimate, each drawing contains a single line that snakes without break, connection or crossing in complex loops that fill the space in surprising ways, creating labyrinthine structures that suggest different visions to different viewers. Ross said the works arose partly from the questions “What if everything were connected to everything else? What if everything grew from everything else?”

The drawings require careful planning – Ross utilized tape to map out a path for her installation piece on the gallery’s walls – but also the flexibility to change course when something surprising emerges in the process. For instance, a drawing in the exhibition, “Unicursal Reverie No. 1,” features the silhouette of a boy, who appears to be enjoying the view near a cliff’s edge. Ross said the boy began to appear to her surprise while she was drawing the work, and she scrapped her previous plans in order to fulfill what was developing.

“Working like this you have to be prepared for something showing up on its own,” said Ross, who received her M.F.A. from VCU. “You have to allow the work to have its own space.”

Ross said the single-line drawings originated from her ongoing search for a good artistic problem to explore. Ross said artists crave good problems because the solutions can prove elegant.

“When we find a really good problem, we hurl ourselves at it,” Ross said. “Otherwise, you might as well curl up on the hammock and snooze.”
 
Matthews, who also received his M.F.A. from VCU, confronts a societal problem in his “Knoxville Girl” works, a series of pencil drawings that depict with unsettling psychological realism a murder and its aftermath.

The drawings show the build-up to the murder, the murder itself and the clumsy attempts of those involved to cover up the crime. There are also individual portraits of the tale’s characters.

Matthews manages to tell an intricate story with the drawings, showcasing the characters’ jealousy, rage and regret, traveling from the characters’ drunken, lighthearted mood in the early drawings to the survivors’ sober remorse in the final panels. The lazy, commonplace appearance of the characters and their stroll into the woods with a bottle of liquor gives the murder itself, which leaves the victim in a sudden heap on the ground, a particularly disturbing quality.

Matthews said “Knoxville Girl” reflects the rash actions that can result in a group.

“Really, it’s about the human capacity to fall victim to the herd mentality,” said Matthews, who has likened the series of drawings to a morality play or to a ballad that employs graphite rather than instruments.

“Portraits: More than Just a Pretty Face” challenges preconceptions about the portrait while honoring some of its traditional forms. The exhibition, which fills the gallery’s second-floor rooms, showcases a wide variety of works, from the expected (conventional paintings, sculpture busts) to the unexpected (baseball cards, mug shots).

“We wanted to reinforce the idea that portraits really are everywhere,” said Megan Rupnik, a VCU graduate student and one of the curators of the exhibition.

Most of the artworks are contemporary, though two pieces date from the 16th century. Works include examples from international artists such as Cindy Sherman and Chuck Close, celebrated regional artists such as Thomas A. Daniel and Theresa Pollak, emerging artists such as Timothy Rusterholz and Chinonyeelu Amobi, student artists still enrolled at VCU and even non-artists.

The exhibition was curated by students enrolled in the spring graduate course, “Development and Analysis of Museum Exhibitions,” which is taught by Margaret Lindauer, associate professor and museum studies coordinator in the VCU Department of Art History. Working from ongoing research by Eric Garberson, associate professor of art history at VCU, the students sought to investigate visual codes in portraits and what they say about both a portrait’s subject and its creator.

“Portraits allow viewers to interact with them in a way that other works do not,” said Claire Dixon, one of the exhibition’s curators. “They create a relationship between the subject and the viewers.”

The exhibition includes formal works and playful ones, realistic works and abstract ones. Some of the paintings and photographs are representative of the straightforward depictions of family members that are found in living rooms, while others are much more experimental.

Sometimes, the works describe people without actually showing them. For instance, one painting, “Sarah,” portrays its namesake with an image of her open medicine cabinet. Other portraits include a look at the unpopulated rooms of a house and the view from the driver’s seat of a car.

The large volume of works and the absorbing variety of them will allow visitors to make connections between contrasting styles while appreciating the artists’ sense of invention and originality.

The Summer Exhibition is free and open to the public. The Anderson Gallery is located at 907 1/2 W. Franklin St. on the VCU campus. Operating hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. A reception, which is also open to the public, will be held on June 20 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.