THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409200141
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: BY MARK DuROSE, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Because summer is most closely associated with youth, it seems appropriate that the last show of the season at Norfolk's Art Works Gallery would spotlight young artists.
The show is titled, simply enough, ``Young Emerging Artists,'' and features the works of eight artists, seven of whom have just finished high school or are just beginning their senior year at the Governor's Magnet School for the Arts. In this instance, the artists' youth relates in no way to the quality of their work, which is remarkably high.
The most versatile work in the show comes from the one exception to the rule, David Murphy, an Old Dominion University senior. His entries include etchings with aquatint, oil paintings and drawings. In a series of oils, Murphy deftly tackles such unlikely subjects as ``Green Room for a Nude Talk Show.'' His drawings show an equally keen feel for the absurd in ``Educational TV,'' which presents a small child, ignored by his mother, finding his ``education'' in the form of a Three Stooges rerun.
Murphy is at his best, however, when he moves into the world of three-dimensional forms. His sculptures in wood are smooth and perhaps offer a truer indication of his artistic calling.
Gracing the show's invitation is a work by Brian Booth, a Maury High graduate who is a freshman at the prestigous Cooper Union in New York. ``Sleeping Venus Dismembered'' is one of several charcoal sketches that show Booth to be at the head of this class in terms of pure imagination and creativity.
In ``Venus,'' as well as in other pieces, Booth explores the inherent power and strengths of femininity, its long-standing callous treatment, and disturbing dissection at the hands of a world and society dominated by the masculine.
``America is still a very masculine culture,'' Booth says.
The most eye-pleasing drawing in this series is ``Four Women Preparing for Sleep,'' in which Booth takes a mythological leap toward the other side of the equation. The women are represented with weapons, casting them in the role of warriors, yet the figures are graceful and the faces covered with stars, denoting the retention of a more celestially harmonious approach to life.
Booth is also responsible for the two most impressive additions to the show, both in size and presence. His oil rendering of a nude features coldly cyanic skin tones set off by deep burning reds in the more errogenous areas. The picture of women is of their delicate balance of cold and hot, control and passion. ``Hypnophobia,'' rendered in oil, tar, and ash, presents a human skeleton entombed in space with a large gear. The piece engages what Booth sees as the obsession of western culture with the idea that constant motion is synonymous with progress. The title refers to what Booth calls ``the fear of sleep and death as an end to productivity, and as failure.''
Significantly, high school senior Stephen Marder's most impressive entry is a monoprint diptych portrait of Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, an artist who has influenced most of the young artists in the exhibit. Schiele's work has found a spotlight of worldwide appreciation only recently. He died at the age of 28 in the early 1900s.
Perhaps because Schiele died so young, he has in some ways become a symbol of young man as artist for up-and-coming painters, in much the same way Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, who both died at 27, have been immortalized as musical heroes and national icons.
Following most closely in the Austrian's footsteps is Frank Benson. Benson, son of gallery owner Beth Benson, turns in the most polished performance of all. Benson was recently included in the student Gallery '94 exhibit at the Chrysler Museum, and won first place in The Hermitage Foundation's annual Art Show for Norfolk high school students.
Benson displays a mature intensity in his expressionistic endeavors. His use of tones and hues that defy expectations serve to bring out the fierceness of his feeling, drawing the viewer in while simultaneously reminding him there is something happening on the canvas that runs deeper and not quite in synch with everyday perception. This is most apparent in his nude titled ``Woman.''
The muted and scratched surface of ``Benson's Daredevil Performer,'' the result of late-night improvisation in technique, lends a distinctly aged quality to the oil. The effect does great justice to the piece and conveys the feeling that this painting would look more at home on the walls of a metropolitan museum than a small Norfolk gallery.
Art Works owner Beth Benson claims she decided to do the show, ``because I was ready for something new, more immediate and exciting in the sense of fresh artistic perspectives.''
Art lovers would do well to catch this show while they can. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
These wood sculptures are the work of ODU student David Murphy.
Graphic
AT A GLANCE
What: ``Emerging Young Artists'' exhibit.
Where: Art Works Gallery, 321 W. Bute St. Call 625-3004
When: Through Sept. 30. Monday-Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.;
Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
by CNB