'Again, for the First Time'...in Johnson

Author: Michael Hatch

Studio art majors Dave Sharp '03 and Gigi Gatewood '03 opened an exhibition of their independent work titled "Again, For the First Time," last Friday in the Johnson Gallery.
On display until Wed., April 30, the exhibit showcases Sharpe's paintings and site-specific sculptures and Gatewood's photography, which work together to articulate ideas of space, atmosphere and memory.
The collaborative title "Again, For the First Time," is indicative of a combined initiative present in the work of both artists to pursue,"those instances when you see something with the same intensity as for the first time - the things you begin to overlook," according to Sharp, and is about "simple, everyday objects coming to life," Gatewood explained. The result is a crisp and highly professional exhibition.
Gatewood's richly defined medium-format photographs appear like shifting insights to memories and dreams half-forgotten, with perspectives that take pleasure in redefining quintessential American themes.
In "Artificial Happiness, Hamptons" and its partner piece, "Artificial Happiness, Miami," her control of both mood and printing combine to create a sense of bleak and melancholy memory.
The two sets are each composed of six 11-inch square prints laid two by three, presenting shifting distances and perspectives on two similar scenes.
In "Artificial Happiness, Hamptons," the bleached summer sun warms a conspicuously vacant backyard whose swimming pool and bent lawn chair stand out among the clover and grass as the only traces of human activity.
The combination of a faded dark edge and brilliant sunlight give the feeling of looking through the eye of someone's memory as it shifts among the six varying perspectives.
Similarly, "Artificial Happiness, Miami," uses the same formatting to depict a vacant water park in the early morning.
Except as we look through the parking lot fence at bright, bubbly, plastic creatures and slides, the post-dawn sunlight casts a bone-chilling tone on the scene. Both "Hamptons" and "Miami" are places normally associated with the halcyon days of summer, but Gatewood has stripped these places of such functions, providing instead the stark perspective of memory.
In "Cinnamon" the camera's gaze moves inside to a strip-club, and the long format of four nine-by-eleven-inch 35mm prints is almost entirely consumed by the length of a leg laid across the dance floor.
Read almost as a landscape, the woman's body is lit in a wide range of yellow and magenta tones, setting her apart from the deep recesses of the background.
This chiaroscuro effect along with a focus on color, surface and length of the leg are arresting and disturbing. The woman seems like a strip-bar casualty.
Sharp's works, by comparison, are much less figurative or representational but set a similar tone and employ similar light play as they work to articulate the space within the Johnson building.
"Sheets," a series of plastic films draped in consecutive layers in the Johnson foyer, redefines the entryway in such a way as to make you aware of your own existence within the building.
As the sheets drift with the air currents passing off of your body you realize the effect of your movement within a space. This sculpture casts an almost ceremonial mood as the opaque plastic works to obscure the lighting and as the cut of the material lowers and widens the perceived entryway.
In "Pendulum," Sharp again works with the air circulation within Johnson, working as he put it, "to define processes that are always going on. The solidity of air is not something you recognize."
Transparent painter's plastic is manipulated into cylinders that literally crawl out of the ventilation shafts of the third floor, extending to the midpoint of the room over the pit that reaches to the second floor.
From the point where they meet, the air seems to gain weight as it descends in a wider central cylinder to the floor of the second-story pit to a bubble whose open end allows the air to continue on its circulatory mission through the building.
Best explored from both the third and the second floors, "Pendulum" articulates what is taken for granted and suddenly makes a curiosity out of what is typically mundane.
This exploration of process is further articulated by a group of paintings and sketches on the third floor that accompany the work.
In their loose exploration what it means to see something with the same curiosity as for the first time, Gatewood's photographs and Sharp's sculptures succeed admirably.
Their work is strong both in technical skill and in content. The multiple layers of texture and perspective that define both artists' works call for many repeated viewings.