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Michael Scott at EVOKE Contemporary
The image of a polar bear adrift on a melting mini iceberg in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” probably did more to convince people that climate change is real than all the political pundits in the world. I remember seeing one of Michael Scott’s big polar bear paintings around that time, too, and thinking the scale of his work matched the urgency of the looming environmental catastrophe. In Scott’s current show, “Habitat and the Preternatural,” at EVOKE Contemporary, though, what struck me was how poorly painted his bears were. “Captured Bear in Arctic,” for instance, looks like an overfed pug. And the loopy ropes that are supposedly binding him look more casually draped than taut. In “Origin of Species,” polar bears attack a ship — a good revenge plot idea — but sadly, Scott’s stiff, wooden bears fail to convince. His wolf paintings are better. Emerging from flames or surrounded by fireflies, Scott’s wolves are powerful, mystical and just frightening enough to keep our attention. Where Scott really shines, though, are in his depictions of crashing icebergs and lava, especially “Frozen Geyser, Yellowstone,” which is like a Caspar David Friedrich with the drama knob cranked to 11. These are big paintings of sublime terror, impeccably painted and appropriate in feeling and scale to the climate change emergency. More of this, please! Ditch the dopey bears.
“Habitat and the Preternatural” by Michael Scott runs through July 19 at EVOKE Contemporary, 550 South Guadalupe St., Santa Fe. For more information, visit evokecontemporary.com.
Richard Mosse at Thoma Foundation’s Art Vault
Richard Mosse’s films and photographs are instantly recognizable. His aerial views of color-shifted landscapes are gorgeously psychedelic. Pink, magenta and sky blue trees. Crimson and clover, over and over. And if I had a multi-million dollar mansion where I hosted big hippie drug parties, I’d love to have his massive, high-gloss, acid-colored landscapes on my walls. The problem is, Mosse is trying to deal with serious, real-world issues, namely the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the displacement of the Indigenous Yanomami people. These are the subjects of his film, “Broken Spectre,” and the related monumental photographs that complete his current Art Vault exhibition, “Broken Spectre(s).” Mosse’s approach to the Amazon crisis seems almost as exploitative as the resource-extracting multinational corporations he criticizes. Like them, he swoops in, takes what he wants — images — and turns them into products that enrich himself — high-end artworks. Mosse has faced criticism throughout his career for aestheticizing real-world problems, yet he has never substantially altered his practice in response. I wish I could simply love his work — it’s so visually seductive — but in good conscience, I can’t.
“Broken Spectre(s)” by Richard Mosse runs through Sept. 27 at Art Vault, 540 South Guadalupe St., Santa Fe. For more information, visit artvault.thomafoundation.org.
Nadya Tolokonnikova at Turner Carroll Gallery
There are artists who make casual political statements in their work, and then there are artists like Nadya Tolokonnikova whose entire life is a tireless fight against authoritarianism, patriarchy and oppression. Tolokonnikova, the creator of Pussy Riot, has been imprisoned for her art in her native Russia, and some of her friends have been assassinated. Those facts alone make her a heroic figure, but what makes her a great artist is the highly sophisticated visual language she has developed, which blends elements of medieval Russian Orthodox art and the early Soviet avant-garde, enlisting the entirety of Russian art history into her devastating aesthetic arsenal. Several of the black-on-black engraved wood paintings in her current show at Turner Carroll Gallery feature images of the artist-revolutionary herself, recalling how avant-garde artists like Alexander Rodchenko cultivated their own bold personas — he in worker’s coveralls, she in a balaclava. “MUGSHOT” has a light-up element — Tolokonnikova’s take on the three-pronged Russian Orthodox cross that looks like a stitched wound. Its faint red glow against the all-black laser-cut photomontage has the cold intensity of a Berlin goth club. The range of historical and contemporary references distilled into these deceptively simple works is astounding, and they take time to decode. It’s not easy to make such nuanced, multifaceted art when you’re on Russia’s Most Wanted list, knowing your life is constantly in danger. Perhaps no artist since Jacques-Louis David has so successfully integrated the personal and the political, bringing the fullness of art history to bear on the life-and-death theater of contemporary life. See this show now before it closes.
“I Wasn’t Invited so I Broke the Door” by Nadia Tolokonnikova runs through July 15 at Turner Carroll Gallery, 725 Canyon Road, Santa Fe. For more information, visit turnercarrollgallery.com.
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Zahra Marwan at Hecho a Mano
The watercolor paintings that comprise Zahra Marwan’s “A Night like Sea Waves” have a twee, whimsical charm — not unexpected for a nine-time illustrator of children’s books. But Marwan’s fusion of autobiographical narrative, fantasy and cultural commentary far transcends the illustration genre. Without question, these are works of art. My favorites are those, such as “Year after Year after Year,” “Skip, Skip, Skip, Lightly” and “Under the Quiet New Mexican Sky,” where Marwan’s tiny people, airplanes and dragonflies move in dusky shadowlands of abstract-expressionist brushstrokes. These works remind me of the narrative paintings of Mary DeVincentis, another underappreciated contemporary artist. Some of Marwan’s paintings have decorative borders that allude to Arabic and Persian miniatures, although the cafes and cinemas they enframe are thoroughly contemporary. Birds are a recurring motif, as well, and they all seem friendly, even the falcons. Bad things do sometimes happen in these paintings — people break up, and at least one grieves a dead parent — but there’s a sweetness and lightness in the work that’s worth defending. With so much tragedy in the world, we could all use a little sweetness.
“A Night like Sea Waves” by Zahra Marwan runs through July 28 at Hecho a Mano, 129 W. Palace Ave., Santa Fe. For more information, visit hechoamano.org.
