Spotlight Reviews

MAINE

ICA at MECA/Portland
www.meca.edu
Back From Nature: The Sportsman Redux

 A connection to nature and an interest in observation, often played out as a dallying in art, were common pastimes for proper Victorian gentlemen. The Brushians were a group of artist-sportsmen who took expeditions into the Maine wilderness at the turn of the last century to hunt, paint, and commune with nature. The Sportsman Redux explores contemporary perceptions of the sportsman-artist in a time when the two seem entirely unconnected as iconic types. Curated by Cindy M. Foley, the exhibition presents a broad look at the icon of the sportsman through the eyes of artists.

A group of contemporary artists, led by Bob Braine, are directly inspired by the Brushians. Braine built two kayaks and led a three-day expedition through the Maine woods. His photographic documentation of the trip draws attention to objects that would not be found in the environment a century ago. Braine removed these objects from the landscape, recast them, and placed them in the gallery, as they would be in an ethnographic museum. In this context each object acts as a fetish, made special because of its inclusion in their trip. Hung high on the ceiling, Braine's boats take on a totemic effect. Noah Frigault, who also participated in the journey, left paper samples open to the elements. Now in the gallery framed behind glass, the marks of weather and animal intervention become both marks of survival and images tied to the history of expressive painting.

Among this group of artist-explorers, Jack Rigoulet's work most closely shadows the work of the earlier explorers. His photographs of the landscape are made in the same spirit as the Brushians’, as beautiful images reverent of the landscape, achievable only through the direct observation of these isolated places. Rigoulet's abstracted composition and his contemporary imaging process thrust his own voice into this tradition.

In other areas of the exhibition, both male and female artists subverted the notion of the sportsman as a figure of manliness. Inga Svala Thordottir replaces the male nature of the hunt with a video showing the artist, a young and attractive Icelandic woman, clubbing a cormorant to death in the traditional hunting style of her Icelandic culture. A very different feminine view is presented by Kimberly Hart whose "cat perch" seat replaces this typically functional and rustic thing with a contrived feminine form: an ornamental pink ladder leading to a crocheted perch coated with sequins and pom-poms. The feminine colors and soft forms change the esthetic of the hunt as we know it. Andrew Mobray's installation and series of photographs replace the proverbial orange hunting costume with a white vinyl suit trimmed in pink, reminiscent of the formal attire of the Brushians.

These ruminations on the nature of sportsmanship unveil a stream of social concerns and gender reevaluations. Ultimately, the lingering effect is a reminder that while art can be a sporting place of joy and discovery, the sporting impulse, far removed from the quiet meditations of the Brushians, can become a brutal quest played out in a complex urban form of the hunt. Lauren Fensterstock