Power to the People

"Art in Science XVI: Electricity"Through April 12, Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, 3600 Market St., 215-387-2262, www.kleinartgallery.org

There is no doubt that the discovery of electricity has had a more profound social and economic impact than just about anything else humanity has dredged up. Not only do we enjoy the benefits of the technological advances electricity provides, we also harbor a cultural dependency on the stuff. Without it there would be no bright lights, no big cities. Sources of power have become issues of contention in social and political activity. The two biggest stories in the news at present -- Enron and Afghanistan -- are centered around power: who’s got it and how can America get its hands on it. The show “Electricity” at the Esther Klein Gallery, the 16th in a series of exhibits on “Art In Science,” proposes a discussion of the facets of electricity through work that either explores the nature of the volt or depends on it.

Nick Cassway's Vaseline portraits of Enron executives are the most obviously successful works in the show. Attacking power from a multitude of angles, the portraits, in their oil-stained obscurity, reflect on the "invisible hand" of moguls in the two things that fuel our country:-- electricity and cold, hard cash. While these screen prints started out as sharply rendered portraits, as time passes they will bleed into invisibility, much like the moguls themselves. The work for this show comes out of Cassway's past conceptual screen-printing work, in which he spray-painted images of pop icons onto plastic bags, commenting on the throwaway nature of star culture. The fading petroleum faces explore further the momentary quality of infamy. When the faces become nothing more than oil blots on paper, America will have forgotten the whole scandal.

Moving from the political to the personal, trained electrical engineer Chris Vecchio's sculpture, involving bone and electric gizmos, looks at electricity on a body level. With a presentation that looks like Damien Hirst meets the Unabomber, the sculpture is rigged like something out of The Anarchist Cookbook. In his other retro-nautical devices, the movement of the needle mirrors the pulse, reminding the viewer that the vital force is, after all, just an electrical shock. In his sculpture titled Jacob's ladder, the viewer interacts directly with the work, triggering a delayed wave of electricity, which in turn has the effect of startling the viewer and quickening the pulse.

Robin Braun's paintings and Jill Galloway's abstract photographs depict electricity in action. Braun paints small-scale oils of lightning bolts, and Galloway photographs her TV through a special lens, the former showing electricity as a natural force and the latter as a harnessed one. Galloway's photographs look both outward and inward, in turn resembling the universe, in turn resembling cells. As gallery director Dan Schimmel put it, "It might just be Homer Simpson we're looking at. You can't tell."

Other work in the show has a more spurious connection with electricity. The lo-fi animation stylings of Andrew Jeffrey Wright and Clare Rojas spark into life the pages of a fashion mag, using Sharpies and Wite-Out to add lurid scatological activity to the pristine models. The perfection that computer manipulation has given these models, Rojas and Wright take away with crude cartoons. Complementing the Wite-Out manipulation is the visionary video work of David Gerbstadt, known for leaving his art in public places. As he etches and scratches, frame by frame, into original film stock, he draws attention to the artifice of the cinematic experience. Also using video, and in the tradition of Andy Warhol, Joseph Hu displays a looped, unmoving self-portrait titled I Can't Believe I' m Here Again.

The success of this show hinges on the kind of fortuitous timing and strategic planning of Ben Franklin getting struck by lightning. Standing in the middle of a minefield of social and fiscal turmoil, this particular combination of artistic vision and technology works somewhat like a key on the end of a kite.

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October 31, 2002
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