Life
in cities is all about navigating structures. We dart around in cars or
on bikes trying to dodge each other, as the cityscape whizzes by. We
mostly see what we need to see, orienting ourselves within patterns of
motion, noting the landmarks that mark our progress. That transformation
of landscapes into structures, and structures into forms observed in
passing, is what defines “modern” life—a process of constant
reorientation in time as well as space, as motion becomes a constant.
Maria Levitsky's photo-montages reflect that process as particular
places and spaces are sliced and diced, then reassembled in accordance
with the inner logic of the mind's eye, the subjective GPS of the
psyche, Here the steel skeleton of an industrial building seems to
levitate in articulated segments in Collusion of Redundant Obstacles, below, suggesting a time lapse birth-to-death ballet of bare steel girders coming together and then coming apart. Uncanny Mirror features
the ordinary yet elegant elements of antique Nola residences montaged
into fragments as if reflected in a shattered mirror or a nihilist
kaleidoscope. But her Treme Mystery House, top, takes us back to
the elegant decadence of the 19th century in ghostly interior spaces
where the walls and stairs go their own whimsical ways in an
anachronistic puzzle palace--a Creole townhouse where past and present
cohabit the same time worn spaces like sleepwalkers, intersecting in
passages and stairways that seem to lead to unknowable other dimensions.
Natalie
Tobacyk's Perceptions series includes a striking sculpture of stacked
folding chairs, below, like a latter day constructivist monument to the
history of public meetings, those anonymous ephemeral gatherings for
purposes often soon forgotten. Her investigation of things quotidian is
further explored in prints, paintings and sculptures based on random
arrangements of plastic bags, the most disposable of everyday objects.
Some are full but others are just outlines of baggies oozing pigment,
afterimages of the lowest items in our consumer caste society,
democratically memorialized for posterity. ~Bookhardt
Maria Levitsky: Uncanny Mirror of Available Darkness; Natalie Tobacyk: Perceptions; Through June 2, UNO St. Claude Gallery, 2429 St. Claude Ave., 280-6493