For Four Artists, It’s A Matter Of Perception

It’s a piece of paper, crumpled in a motion that likely didn’t take more than a couple seconds. But context is everything. There’s the coloration that highlights the form the paper took, letting us see the wrinkles and the grooves. And then there’s the jar. If this paper were on the floor, we might think it was pretty, but also a failed attempt, something the artist threw away on the road to something better. The jar makes the paper seem almost like it’s floating in formaldehyde. It’s something to be preserved, examined, part of an ongoing science experiment.

The specimen is part of Martha Willette Lewis’s ​“Crush,” one of four solo exhibitions — collectively titled ​“Solos 2019” — at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art running now through Dec. 22. Each artist explores perception and memory in her own way, but taken together, connections appear among them.

As Lewis writes, ​“one simple aspect of working with paper that is special joy to her is the way it can go from smooth and flat to complex and sculptural so instantly and violently. Both flat and dimensional works feature her visual trademarks of lack of scale (creating elements which could be massive or tiny or simultaneously both) and complexly facetted forms which echo natural structures such as geological masses, insect wings, or icebergs…. as one mathematics paper on the subject [of crumpling] put it: ​‘A crumple is the visual residue of a climatic event.’ There is implied movement and force along with the aspect of the discarded, the frustrated, the left behind, the abandoned idea…”

Lewis’s heady ideas behind her pieces hold water. The shapes are compelling enough to get lost in, and yes, can easily be imagined as much larger shapes — icebergs, asteroids, or as part of her statement gestures toward, the topography of celestial spaces. Or, one imagines, perhaps an object that seems smooth is revealed to have a surface as jagged as this when viewed under a microscope. Lewis’s inspiration in scientific and philosophical ideas continues to guide her art into new places.

In the next gallery, Ellen Hackl Fagan’s vivid pieces stretch nearly from floor to ceiling. ​“A self-portrait can take many forms,” her statement reads. ​“Empirical evidence of one’s life in the form of construction materials from renovation projects around the house and garden, left in the garage, are a source material … working wet on wet, Fagan places her objects on soaked paper, and applies pigments after creating a pattern with the tiles, asphalt shingles, jars, and plastics. As the large museum board gets covered, she finds she is painting blindly, more of a conductor of a scene, but not the primary actor.”

Fagan’s intuitive style and Lewis’s cerebral approach lead them to pieces that have something to say to each other. Both sets of pieces veer away from representation to explore form, and texture, and both find a place in vivid colors and bold lines. And for Fagan, her own approach yields its own set of ideas. ​“By showing the ghostly view of the former objects, feelings of loss and memory exude from the interplay of light and dark. Finding that the patterns created with mass-produced materials are similar to musical structures, the geometric, repeating patterns, contrasts, and nuances feel melodic. Like a life, there are moments of darkness and solitude, confusion, or bliss.”

Down the hall from the gallery housing Fagan’s work, things get more concrete. ​“Using cement as my medium,” artist Olivia Bonilla writes, ​“I’m interested in the idea of excess in today’s throwaway society. Conveying the never-ending cupcake in a sugar-coated reality. Reflective of today’s world of overstimulation and reappropriated ideas.”

The sarcasm on display in the cupcakes stacked impossibly high — surely if someone ate a cupcake like that, they’d live to regret it — gets a twist on the accompanying canvases and sculptures. The dog in the painting is nauseatingly cute, and threatens to be overwhelmed by the junk around it. Is owning a tiny dog like that dangerously close to owning a toy? The sculptures don’t offer any relief; they are rendered so adorable that it becomes unsettling. Bonilla proves herself adept at finding the rotten core in the most candy-colored consumerism. She offers a sardonic take on the ideas of Lewis’s discarded idea, and Fagan’s discarded objects.

Finally, Barbara Marks offers a series of canvases entitled ​“Painting from Recollection.” The title alone turns out to be a key to unlocking the images. Each of them is titled with the place it represents. The images suggest the ways that memory can change the recollection of a place. The shapes become less distinct — in some cases becoming abstract enough that, as in Lewis’s pieces, the sense of scale is removed.

At the same time, the colors become more vivid, as if the memories are now imbued with the emotions the artist felt while she was in those places, and maybe intensified by the emotions the artist feels in remembering her trips. In some cases Marks ends up using the same flashy color palette as Fagan and Bonilla. The four artists together leave the viewer with much to sift through regarding how we perceive and remember the world around us and how we give it meaning, whether it’s the shoreline of a foreign country, a sundae, a piece of garden equipment, or a simple piece of paper.

“Solos 2019” runs at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St., through Dec. 22. Visit the center’s website for hours and more information.