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Material (Re)Orientation
FALL EXHIBITIONS AT THE DODD GALLERIES
By Alden DiCamillo arts@flagpole.com
The Lamar Dodd School of Art opened three new exhibi
tions this month, each developing narratives around mate
rial abstraction’s ability to shift perceptions of bodies and
the spaces they occupy.
“Legion Pool” by Athens artist Carol John, on view in the
Bridge Gallery, tells the story of a muggy summer’s day at
Legion Pool, a community space located near the University
of Georgia’s Tate Student Center. Each painting works
collectively to reveal playful vocabulary through abstract
marks that describe the elements of Legion Pool that can’t
quite be put into words: the sensation of repetitive laps, the
weight of the atmosphere on a hot day, how memory forms
during the summer.
John’s main work is a long, unstretched piece of canvas,
with the bottom corners unfastened, allowing the lower
edge to lift from the wall. Large blue rectangles of heavy,
sticky aquamarine and light, cool
phthalo surround a hot orange field
of paint that frames stacks of clumsy
pool tile patterns. One could be look
ing into Legion Pool or completely
submerged in it.
The rest of the works in “Legion
Pool” employ repetitions of circles,
whimsical marks left by John’s elegant
brushstrokes and tensions of con
trasting greens, pinks, oranges, blues
and reds that have been worked into
patches of paint to create unity and
variety across each of the canvases.
Smaller paintings of a similar style
finish off the experience of “Legion
Pool” and give viewers space to dwell
on how arrangements of textures,
form and color lead into phenomenal
experiences.
In the Suite Gallery, Mac
Balentine’s show “Fool-ectomy” is a
plethora of pleasurable smells and
sensual textures pointing to queer
constructions of the sensuous body.
The title of the show is derived from
Narrenliteratur, or fool’s literature,
from Renaissance-era Germany that
separates queer individuals and those
with mental illnesses into the category
“fool.”
“Fool-ectomy” calls out the
development of architectural parti
tioning of public and private (clean
and unclean) modes of the body as
constructed within early Greek archi
tecture through the use of veils, faux
pillars and stone marble or brick pat
terns. Balentine combines these pieces
of architecture with sensual materials
like latex, cloth, Air Delights urinal fresheners and three-di
mensional renderings of veils and toilet seat rims to decon
struct this partitioning into a fluid, playful space where
orifice and bodily function are not only acknowledged, but
become active players in breaking apart previously con
structed modes of “dirty and clean.”
The multimedia floor piece “Tappen” is comprised of a
mattress adorned with rose-gold glass wall bricks; white
felt cloth; black, blue, pink and neutral latex material; a
worn, hot-pink quilt; and a repetitive print of the Ultra
Charmin toilet paper bear cuddling pure white toilet paper.
This piece, stretching across the floor, actively deconstructs
the fool. The fool is now fluid, master of material, master
of queer reproduction. The folds of latex, combined with
sexually tender modes of cloth, are mirrored by hanging
latex pieces titled “Gummy Shark” and “Stretch.” Computer
generated prints, titled “Enema” and “Dry,” connect themes
of bodily excrement and fluid concepts of architectural
spaces in which queer bodies might exist.
In the Margie E. West Gallery, there is a different
queering of the body in Alex McClay and Sam Regal’s show
“Turbulent Femme | | towards a radical future.” The show
unapologetically gives femme space to exist in embodied
and disembodied form. Femme draws from an intersec
tional re-understanding of femininity, inclusive of effemi
nate male, queer and non-binary bodies.
On the right and left walls of the gallery are 50 hand
made paper panties, each adorned with a different way to
say “no.” On the far back wall are motion-activated LED
fan lights that flash poetic phrases: “Cheeky Brazillian
Underwear,” “Strangers’ Wedding Video,” “I’m gay.” On the
gallery’s floor is a living room with a couch, coffee table,
plush chair, television, kitsch trophy with underwear and
various intimate and junk items, including condoms, soda
cans, chips and candy wrappers. Projections paint this
installation with phrases of femme pleasure and desire: “I
am your cushions,” “A couch is made for kissing,” “Feast
from Voyeur’s Rich Shame Banquet.” Behind this piece, a
video of Alex McClay’s shadowed profile plays with and
swallows the animated phrase “this is my body.”
In “Turbulent Femme,” sound, volume and poetry are
powerful media for understanding and existing within the
queer (or fluid) nature of femme identity. The exhibition is
embedded within an institutional structure, but it loudly
refuses a neo-patriarchal gaze. The show insists on discov
ering methods of existing as a femme body for femme bod
ies within the fluidity (or queerness) of femme.
All three exhibitions will remain on view through
Friday, Oct. 4, and a Lunchtime Gallery Talk for “Turbulent
Femme” will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 12 p.m. O
A detail of a painting by Carol John
14 FLAGPOLE.COM | SEPTEMBER 25, 2019