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Friday, September 17, 2004
Gallery opens on a fascinatingly grotesque note
Following on the heels of Santa Fe's Fifth International Biennial curated by Robert Storr on the theme of the grotesque, Seattle's Platform Gallery is opening in Pioneer Square with two artists who definitely fill the grotesque bill: Los Angeles' Carlee Fernandez and Portland's Keith Yurdana.
The reason Storr (former curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art) picked the theme is because it has current critical density. There are a lot of creators of the grotesque out there, "resolving irresolvable contradictions" (Storr's phrase) through art.
Fernandez combines taxidermic animals with plastic fruit or tree limbs, fur and feathers creeping into unexpected contexts. Her white rat on the wall sports tumors (red plastic grapes). I especially like her birds on limbs, the way the feathers and skin seem to have grown past the animal, extending themselves as a kind of fungus into a tree.
Yurdana is an expected unexpected: big drawings with squished things and growing molds, drawn with the kind of fastidious skill that tones down the subject matter. It's lovely, after all. His sculpture is harder to take and possibly better for that reason. Who would want it? As soon as that's said, a savvy collector pops up, happy to make room for a tree wrapped in a ragged casing of animal skins.
Platform is run by four Seattle artists: Carol Bolt, Blake Haygood, Stephen Lyons and Dirk Park. They are off to an excellent start.
Platform Gallery, 114 Third Ave. S., 206-323-2808. Hours: Thursdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
-- Regina Hackett
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