FEATURES

It's all over now
Wild Things, Edgar Degas, Sound Sculptures, Image Of Italy, And More
BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

Considering how much less damage is inflicted on the planet by animals other than our species, you think they'd spark more inquisitiveness in us, if not respect. Two photographers who get both points are being featured in the Fine Arts Center Photography Gallery at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston (through October 30).

"Menagerie: Wild Illusions by Anita Chernewski and Captive Beauties by Frank Noelker" combines nearly two dozen photographs that implicitly treat our relationship to the animal world and theirs to ours. The images have been selected from a series by each photographer.

The title of Chernewski's series comments on its setting: dioramas of New York's American Museum of Natural History. The posed taxidermy reveal as much about the late 19th-century need for orderliness in the wild as about how the animals appeared when alive. A family of African rhinoceroses is a poignant portrait of inevitable extinction when the viewer thinks about how valuable as well as beautiful are the unusually long and graceful double horns. Two grizzly bears, one of them standing alert, seem lords of the mountains and open space behind them, which appears to be uninhabited by people.

Since these images are quite small (3-1/2"x4-1/2"), they force a physically intimate connection. Also, they are brown monotones, which reminds us of antique sepia photographs. Chernewski made them using the Vandyke print process, in which photosensitive watercolor paper is held against a negative between glass plates, creating a contact print that has softness and texture.

In contrast to Chernewski's prints, those of Noelker are nearly three feet wide when framed. Similarly photographed out of the context of their native habitat, the solitary animals in Captive Beauties are in zoo settings around the United States and Europe. A short-horned Indian rhinoceros stands in his pen against a peeling wall that has tamarind trees and a pleasant valley painted on it - the mural not there, one assumes, to make him feel at home. To similar effect, in another photograph a warthog blends into the rough, gray cement of a wall as it sits motionless, ignoring a string of vegetables dangling in the foreground.

Music is very much on the collaborative program in "ZHANG HUAN: SEEDS OF HAMBURG" at the Museum of Fine Arts (465 Huntington Avenue, Boston; through November 13), where a series of large-scale photographs, together with music by contemporary Chinese composer Wang Gutong, re-creates a 2002 performance in which Zhang, coated in honey and birdseed, sat in a large cage with 28 doves. The artist, who now lives and works in Brooklyn, started out as part of the "Beijing East Village," a group of artists working outside that city who explored personal issues of sexuality, consumerism, gender, and suffering. A young German artist and his mysterious and humorous ways are the subject of "CHRISTIAN JANKOWSKI: EVERYTHING FELL TOGETHER" at MIT's List Visual Art Center (32 Ames Street, Cambridge; October 14-December 31). Jankowski is known for blurring the distinction between what is staged and what is real in his videos, films, and conceptually based installations, and for allowing chance, coincidence, and magic to shape the direction his projects take. The Holy Artwork, probably his best-known video, was shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial; here the artist joins a minister at a pulpit in his church, videotaping him as he preaches. Whether this is planned or not is entirely unclear and entirely fascinating.

A group exhibition titled "Making Their Marks" will be in URI's Main Gallery (October 13-December 11). The title refers to an influential 1989 Cincinnati Art Museum touring exhibition of a similar name. Included are paintings, drawings, and prints by both established and emerging artists.

And that's not all.

The most ambitious presentation is at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, where three concurrent exhibitions are dealing with the life and work of seminal Impressionist Edgar Degas. The main component is "Edgar Degas: Six Friends at Dieppe" (through January 15), which consists of more than 70 works by Degas and his contemporaries. "French Drawing in the Time of Degas" (through February 12) features 26 drawings by artists whose works Degas collected, such as Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin. "Japonisme: Japanese Prints and Their Influence in France" (through February 12) presents woodblock prints by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others, whose compositional concerns and subject matter strongly influenced Degas and other Impressionist artists.

At Rhode Island College, Bannister Gallery is presenting the work of multi-media Austrian artist Iris Klein (October 6-27, with an opening night reception at 7 pm). Her "Notes of a Body-Double" series was created from constructed photographic environments in which she poses a featureless life-sized rag doll. The RIC October series, "New Media Interpretations of Femininity," will present lectures, performances, and films.

At Brown University's David Winton Bell Gallery, "Joe Diebes: Song of Transformation" runs through October 30. The exhibition consists of two companion sound sculptures by the artist and composer, Sound Field (2003) and Aviary (2004), which treat the merging of nature and technology.

Providence College is showing Brook Hammerle's "Photo Landscapes" at the Hunt-Cavanagh Gallery (November 15-December 17). At Wheeler Gallery, work by Jonathan Sharlin and Kerry Stuart Coppin will be shown November 4-22.

Hera Gallery in Wakefield will be presenting "Forces at Work" (November 19-December 17). The declared intention of the show is to treat the "historically reciprocal relationships between art, spirituality, beauty, and the sublime" through 13 contemporary artists. Works include Sheryl Maree Reily's The Christ, an oversized rosary that includes a crucified female figure, and paintings by Andra Samelson of the Afghanistan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban.

At the Newport Art Museum, Barbara Shamblin's "Image and Memory: Photographs of Italy" is being shown through October 30. The associate professor of art at Salve Regina University will give a gallery talk on October 13 at 5:30 pm. The Warwick Art Museum is showing "Walking On the Ceiling: Paintings by Linda Denosky-Smart" through October 1.

A series of performances and installations by more than 40 digital media artists will be presented September 29-October 15 at The Space at Alice (186 Union Street, Providence), and the nearby new Pixilerations Gallery (191 Westminster Street, Providence). Free performances are at the latter gallery on September 29 at 8 pm and on October 8 at 10 pm, as part of the FirstWorksProv Festival.

Gallery Agniel will show abstractions by Neal Walsh (October 7-November 5, with an opening night reception from 6-9 pm). Off-site, photographer Scott Lapham's "Bearing Witness," documenting the city's disappearing industrial architecture over the last eight years, will be exhibited by the gallery at 50 Aborn Street in Providence (October 1-29). A lecture by Rick Greenwood on industrial architecture will be conducted on October 20 at 7 pm; an opening reception will be held on October 6 from 6-9 pm.

Fall leads into winter and gift-giving time before you know it. You might want to keep track of "Little Pictures 2005" at the Providence Art Club (November 20-December 23), offering original art for $225 or less.

And don't forget that Gallery Night Providence is held on the third Thursday of each month from 5-9 pm, with free parking and shuttles running to more than two dozen galleries, museums, and historic sites. For details, go to www. gallerynight.info. Newport Gallery Night takes place from 5-8 pm on the second Thursday of every month into December. For a walking map, go to newport gallerynight.com. Westerly Gallery Night is held on the first Wednesday of each month from 5-8 pm. For a brochure, call 401.596.2020.