SHU Gallery Exhibition Expands The Definition Of Portraiture

FAIRFIELD — The Gallery of Contemporary Art at Sacred Heart University will host an opening on Sunday, January 25, for “Uncommon Portraits, Uncommon Views.” The exhibition will remain on view until March 4.

The opening will run from 1 to 3:30 pm on Sunday and will include performances by The Carole Sudhalter Jazz Duo.

Deborah Frizzell, PhD, the curator of the exhibition, has selected four ground-breaking contemporary artists from the area to help expand viewers’ perceptions of the limits of portraiture.

Represented are June Ahrens, who divides her time between New Canaan and New York City; Ellen K. Levy of New York City, Debra Pearlman of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Duston Spear of Pound Ridge, N.Y.

Dr Frizzell’s selections seek to answer such questions as, “What does it mean to compose a ‘portrait’? What are the revealing characteristic elements we look for in considering this artistic genre? and What new perspectives, strategies, techniques and forms do contemporary artists explore in order to present fresh views of portraiture?”

The included artists offer a range of thoroughly realized and highly personal answers to these intriguing questions.

June Ahrens’ studio is ten blocks from the former site of the Twin Towers. Her most recent series, “One After the Other,” explores issues of fragility, pain and survival. She uses everyday and often discarded items as materials to create her sculpture.

Dr Frizzell selected Ellen K. Levy for inclusion because “she seeks to intersect the languages of art and science to create ‘uncommon views’ and complex cultural/technological portraits.

“Her series of ‘portraits of the artist’ picture her dramatis personae as an artist/astronaut exploring the links between the structural patterns evolving in both nature and culture. ‘Structure + Failure’ (2003), a digital print from this series, employs collaged technical drawings and photos of spacecraft construction to achieve a density of colliding spaces and relationships, implying multiple timeframes within the mutations of hybrid forms and pivoting axes.

 “The impetus for ‘Structure + Failure’ has its roots in Levy’s earlier paintings, in particular, a commission by NASA, of Challenger (1986),” continued Dr Frizzell. The artist was asked to respond to the Challenger spacecraft disaster by examining the component systems involved in structural failure, while creating visual metaphors for the human tragedy resulting from failed interdependent systems.

Debra Pearlman uses the human figure to create psychological portraits she has meticulously staged.

“The core of my work resides in the printing process,” says Ms Pearlman. “Work is printed, reprinted, recycled, reproduced, repeated and reoriented, disoriented, stateless, ambiguous and fragmentary. The work can begin with an image a title or a phrase. Loss of potential, vulnerability, particularly that of children are frequent concerns.”

Two images from her “Sweet Chariot” series of sleeping girls are included in the exhibition. Photographed from above, two girls are shown on a flowered background in nightclothes with their bodies spooned together foot to head, forming a sinuous S. The large Iris prints are black and white, with a wide range of gray tones that present viewers with a soft and vulnerable image.

The sweetness of the image seems layered with some sense of loss or subtle danger that is reflected in the old African-American spiritual that gives the work its title.

Duston Spear creates works which have often included performance and collaborations with other artists and non-artists in vigils to protest human rights violations and war. Each of his works evokes contemporary reflections by relating to continuing changes in society and culture.

 The featured artists will join Dr Frizzell for a panel discussion in the gallery on Thursday, February 12, at 7 pm. The event is free and open to the public.

 The Gallery of Contemporary Art at Sacred Heart University is at 5151 Park Avenue in Fairfield. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from noon to 5 pm, and Sunday from 1 to 4. Call 203-365-7650 for additional information.