March
13 – April 18, 2004
Artists
as image makers are often inspired – even compelled –
to explore the psyche, that deep place of our memories, our dreams
and our fantasies, both personal and collective. Psyche is boh the
psychological term and Greek word for the more spiritual “soul,”
and Jungarian writer James Hillman says in Re-Visioning Psychology,
“…image-making is a via regia, a royal rod to
soul-making” (p. 23). The stuff of the psyche is usually hidden,
unconscious and unknown, but will reveal its truths to a careful and
creative excavator.
Using
the human figure as a carrier of pysche’s meaning, the four
artists in this exhibition are such excavators. They know that we
are naturally wired to respond to the figure. Babies have been shown
to instinctually respond to a face-like images when only hours old,
and there’s a real preference for the symmetry rooted in that
of the human body (just try getting art students to design asymmetrically).
Artists have found that the human body holds meaning from the Venus
of Willendorf to the Stone Age to Janet Jackson of Superbowl XXXVIII.
NANCY
ROBINSON
In the early 1990s, painter Nancy
Robinson claimed the task of making “psychological
portraits.” She often deals with anxieties with dark, surreal
humor and a clarity that is completely lacking from the commercial
advertising that plays on these same anxieties so cynically. For
more... |
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KAREN
WILCOX
While Robinson’s work primarily mines the personal psyche,
the paintings and sculptures of Karen Wilcox
forge a bridge to the collective psyche. Floating in some cosmic,
primordial soup, these distorted figures are recognizably, disturbingly
human. For more... |
MICHAL
SAGAR
Michal Sagar’s
paintings and drawings show naked babies floating in space, seemingly
in a state of bliss. Like Adam and Eve before their apple-eating
fiasco, they don’t seem to know that they’re naked
and therefore have no shame. For
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RINA
YOON
For Rina Yoon, drawing is her “entry
to the interior life.” When she draws, her images are not
preconceived and she uses the process of drawing to understand
her relationship to her childhood self. Yoon has few memories
of her childhood in Korea and relocating to the United States
as a high school student further blocked her connection to her
past. For more... |
In Greek
mythology, Psyche is a king’s daughter who is destined to be
married to a wild and cruel monster. The oracle who predicts this
advises the king to take her to a mountain ledge and leave her to
her fate. Eros, son of goddess Aphrodite, is chosen to do the dirty
deed, but when he sees beautiful Psyche he falls in love with her
and instead takes her away to a secret place. Psyche falls in love
with Eros, only she doesn’t know who he is because he comes
to her only at night and forbids her to turn on a light. One night,
consumed with curiosity and worried her lover might be some unbearable
beast, she lights a lamp as Eros sleeps beside her. She is charmed
by his beauty and in her amazement a drop of hot oil falls on Eros.
He awakes, is not pleased and despite her entreaties, flees. Now Psyche
is truly distraught and attempts to reconcile with Eros. Eventually
Aphrodite sets a series of seemingly impossible tasks for Psyche to
do. To make a longer story shorter, Psyche succeeds, reunites with
Eros and they live ever after, happily.
Psyche
is “in the dark” until she dares to shine a light on the
forbidden figure in order to find out who or what he is. This is precisely
what artists do: they plumb the depths to shine a light into the dark
unconscious to see what’s there, and then they bring these images
to the light of consciousness in their work. There are serious consequences
– Psyche’s seemingly impossible tasks – for this
knowledge, but artists embrace these tasks and generously share their
findings in paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture. At least that
is the evidence in this particular exhibition.
In the
myth Psyche and Eros have a child who is named Pleasure. And pleasure
is also among the many gifts that artists bring to us.
Patricia
Olson
Curator, Assistant Professor
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