“Gollum” Romps In The Uncanny Valley

Gollum: Monsters of Ruin and the Techno-Sublime at Artspace on Orange Street draws from a lot of disparate elements: punk, computer animation, even old cartoons. What pulls it all together is that it’s creepy, like the better psychological horror movies out there, or the bad dream you can’t shake, and aren’t quite sure you want to.

Named after the character in the Lord of the Rings — and specifically Andy Serkis’s performance of the CGI-enhanced character in the movies — the exhibit is overt in the questions it’s asking. ​“On a daily basis we are offered new technologies that allow us to produce, shape, and share images of our own bodies and those of others,” a statement at the entrance reads. ​“As more and more synthetic images are produced, the singular representation of the body morphs … and over time, like Gollum, we may lose our own self-concept and image.” In exploring these ideas, the artists turn the uncanny valley — the idea that people are horrified when they encounter things that are almost, but not quite, lifelike — into their own unsettling playground.

The show runs until July 3.

Boo Ritson is a bit of a painter, a bit of a scultptor, and a bit of a photographer. She paints her subjects — whether people or food — with emulsion paint and then takes pictures of them before the paint dries. On an intellectual level, the pieces are fun. They play with ideas about media and what it means to make images in different ways. On an emotional level, though, there is something profoundly unsettling about them. The human subjects appear serene in the images, and obviously they were willing participants in the project. But it’s hard to avoid the sense that they’re also uncomfortable, trapped, and maybe in a little danger.

Her image of a cheeseburger is hilarious and also a little disgusting, like the best and also grossest burger you ever ate at the state fair. In that sense, Ritson is tapping the same vein of Americana horror that, say, David Lynch did in Blue Velvet. Something creepy is happening beneath that candy-colored surface, and even the surface doesn’t offer much comfort.

Then there’s Mike & Claire’s short film Skeletons, in which two duncelike figures frantically turn themselves into, well, skeletons. The artists explain that the piece ​“pays homage to silent films and early animations,” from Mickey Mouse to Buster Keaton, made when the minstrel-show roots of vaudeville were still pretty easy to see. The artists state that they imagine the artist as a ​“comic figure” and that they’re interested in exploring ​“the contemporary dilemma of art history — what to do with American painting?” But especially in the context of the rest of the show, these skeletons are being unearthed from deeper soil than that. The things the figures are wearing on their faces look a little too much like gas masks to be only amusing. And even if the skeletons they’re turning themselves into are more like the ones you see in a Dia de los Muertos parade than in a tomb, the hastening toward death can’t be all comical, making for an affecting piece.

Perhaps the culmination of the show was the large installment of Johannes DeYoung’s ​“Ego Loser,” which took up fully half of Artspace’s gallery for the screening of two videos on opposite ends of a long, darkened room. According to the artist, the installation is part of ​“an ongoing series that debuted with a stop-animation man whose face melts as he utters self-help mantras from low-end sources.” In ​“Ego Loser,” one character, a gray, almost statuesque face utters ​“the psalm-like affirmation, ​‘My form is one through every age,’” while another character responds with ​“pathetic animal-like sounds.”

In the din of the exhibition’s opening — it was quite well attended — it was hard to hear what the characters were saying. But it didn’t matter too much. It was clear they were vocalizing something, and the visuals were strong enough on their own. It wasn’t just the way the face of the responding character seemed filled with rage and confusion. It was in the ways both faces were animated to contort beyond what nature would ever allow. The more serene character’s face bubbled and stretched, undermining his apparent calm. The other character’s face seemed misshapen by his emotions, as if they would literally destroy him. The effect was of a growing sense of dread, uncomfortable enough that part of me wanted to leave. But the rest of me couldn’t look away.

Gollum: Monsters of Ruin and the Techno-Sublime runs at Artspace, 50 Orange St., until July 3. It runs concurrently with the show The Answer Is Dark: Selections from the Artspace Flatlife Collection. Other artists in Gollum include Carlos Jiménez Cahua, Laura Marsh and Aude Jomini, Jerry Blackman, Gordon Skinner, Joyce Pensato, and Petra Szilagyi and Mistina Hanscom.