The piece is already playful enough, an energetic overlapping of fabric patterns and vivid colors. There are photographs of trees and what looks like a hotel room. There are also photographs of statues, but taken as if by a 12-year-old or someone with a fun sense of humor, because the cropping of the photos lops off the heads and draws the viewer’s eye to the statues’ naked posteriors. Then there’s the quote, emblazoned in white paint: “My stomach is the most violent of all of Italy.”
The combination of all the elements in the piece — capped by a song lyric from the Legendary Tigermen — pulled a hearty laugh from this reporter. The possibility of laughter is among the genuine delights of “Like a Song I Heard the Other Day,” a collaborative installament by artists Brian Keith Stephens and Pola Esther, working under the name Faloblu. The show runs at Da Silva Gallery in Westville through Dec. 7.
“Why ponder whether art is best planned or serendipitous?” their joint artist statment begins. “It is irrelevant. Regardless of the process, most important is tapping inspiration.” Stephens and Esther, the statement continues, “use each other as reflection and contradiction. They are naturally immersed in figurative imagery but also fascinated with words as signs and signals … their canvas besides traditional fabric or paper could be a wall, a bed sheet, an article of clothing, an old postcard or even a dance floor. They like to use living, sometimes urban spaces as display locations and reuse artifacts of life.”
For “Like a Song,” the artists write, “our intention is to provoke thoughts on patterns … patterns of behavior, patterns of movement, patterns in nature, patterns in life, and patterns in art. Our pieces in this presentation refer to the repetition of experiences and ideas. Things which are coded in our consciousness, from genetic predispositions to songs, and images fixed in our minds. We want to refer to memories, the very fresh ones, which just passed like views through the car window on the road trip, and the ‘as old as we can remember’ ones. Fabrics in this installation come from different places and different people, and are meant to represent our physical, personal, and biographical attitude in art. The photographs were taken in various locations, some a while ago, some just a few days back…. All these elements combined together are supposed to induce visual attack and a menagerie of sensations, an analog version of constant virtual exposure.”
At the risk of oversimplifying, the overall effect of all of these ideas and intentions is that “Like a Song I Heard the Other Day” is a lot of fun. Rather than presenting each piece in its own space on the gallery wall, Stephens and Esther have turned all of the wall space into a nearly continuous piece that nearly spans the entire gallery. The pieces flow into one another in a torrent of ideas.
Another combination of fabric and photographs features a nude in a bathub, repeated a few times over, another nude that appears to be a statue, and — incongruously, irreverently — a cow. It’s captioned with the DJ Khaled and Rihanna song lyric, “when I’m with you, all I get is wild thoughts.”
It’s worth getting a little lost in the details, as travel photos, personal photos, postcards, and other ephemera mingle and spark off one another and the song lyrics keep on supplying the jokes.
It’s all art that, quite refreshingly, doesn’t take itself too seriously. So often we’re told to think of art in very important terms, as a quest for deeper meaning. But it can be play, too. The sense that Stephens and Esther deeply enjoy their collaboration is overwhelming. It spills across the gallery walls. In that way, it’s inspiring. It’s about making art not only to make disparate elements into a greater whole, but for the sheer joy of making something. And there is something playfully profound in that.
“Like a Song I Heard the Other Day” runs at Da Silva Gallery, 897 – 899 Whalley Avenue, through Dec. 7. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.