Artists Read Between The Lives

Lisa Toto’s Can’t Sleep is a portrait of insomnia familiar to anyone who has suffered from it. Its multiple exposures detail what it can be like — first being in bed unable to lose consciousness, then getting up, because why not, you’re up anyway, then thinking better of it and getting back into bed. It also captures the way time seems to split in the depths of sleeplessness, the sense that every second is passing with unbearable slowness, and at the same time, the unpleasant realization, upon looking at the clock, that it’s far too late to get a good night’s sleep. The subject is rendered more poignant by its sense of privacy. Should we even be looking? But that’s also the moment that we connect with the subject, through shared understanding.

“My feelings of struggle, sadness and fear of the Covid-19 pandemic are depicted in this series,” Toto writes in an accompanying statement. ​“With everyone in lockdown and schools forced to teach remotely, I decided that I needed a way to release my feelings so I didn’t spiral into an abyss of hopelessness. This was my form of journaling which is why you will see me featured in many of the images. Lockdown left me with no one else too photograph but myself. So I experimented with this 1850 technique in using 2021 digital equipment to capture what I wanted to say.… Patience and endurance is the key to getting the exposure and focus you want. Most of the time you have very little control over focus. The images have a blurred quality to them which is exactly how we felt during this extremely difficult time — a loss of control of our emotions and the numbers during the pandemic.”

Toto’s arresting images, gathering together until the title ​“Pinhole Perspectives,” are just part of the current group show at Kehler Liddell Gallery on Whalley Avenue in Westville, running now through Sept. 5. The three winners of the gallery’s 2020 juried show — Warda Geismar, Jackie Heitchue, and Brian Williams — also appear in the show until the title ​“Form Focus Figure.” Together all the artists show their sense of grappling with the time we’re in, as we gain back, with great fragility, some of the art and social life we lost in March 2020.

For Warda Geismar, ​“this past year has reaffirmed the fact that we die,” she writes in an accompanying statement. ​“Two important souls in my world died. I turned to my art to make sense of my grief, and what I found was so much life! … Creating the artwork in this show enabled me to be with these special beings allowing them to live on through me. I came to understand that those who leave this world, live on through those that stay.”

Geismar’s hard-earned insights have led to some raw, highly effective pieces. In each image she creates, the grief is palpable. But, as she states, so too is the hope. Her focus on the flesh of her subjects reminds up both of our limitations and the physical tools we all have to try to push them, expand them, and maybe even overcome them, even if it it’s just through carrying on the work of those who came before us.

Where Geismar turned her attention to the corporeality of the human body, artist Jackie Heitchue responded to the pandemic by moving into a kind of surrealism pointed at the world around us, as giant leaches roll from the beds of pickups, apples are suspended in ice cubes destined to be their grave. ​“My newest work reflects my evolving feelings as I navigate this extraordinary time and adjust to life in my newly-emptied nest,” Heitchue writes in her statement. ​“The subjects I photograph are gathered from my immediate surroundings … Individually, each image is a story. Taken as a whole, this work is a fable of motherhood, love, and the inevitability of loss.”

But like Geismar, Heitchue is also quick to see the life beginning anew from the decay — and perhaps being impossible without it. Her mushrooms sprout from teacups and wheelbarrows. The aesthetic extends to other images as well. whether it’s a row of eggs lined up in someone’s arms, lit just so that eggs and arms are transformed into a set of teeth and contorting lips. Heitchue’s photographs indulge a dark playfulness that both unsettles and engrosses.

At first glance, Brian Williams’s abstract sculptures may seem the antithesis of the more overtly visceral work in the rest of the show. But there’s little abstraction in the way he works. You could perhaps argue that as an artist Williams is concerned about the same thing as the other artists in the show, but he deals with it in the process, perhaps — not in the final product.

“I create abstract minimalist geometric wood constructions. All of the wood components of my work are reclaimed,” Williams writes. ​“Creating work from materials that would otherwise be discarded has both an artistic sustainability factor and an economic appeal. My method of working is primarily one of experimentation. The revelatory learning experience of handling materials, invariably provides a direction to follow. I find that the simplicity and serenity of repetitive forms can have an appeal all of their own. Lighting plays a crucial role in my work by adding a dramatic and transformative element to each piece.” Sometimes the hands that do the most concrete work make the cleanest, most abstract lines.

Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Avenue, has returned to normal business hours, but visitors must remain masked. Visit the gallery’s website for more information.