Artist takes new direction with latest ‘Material Evidence’
show
UCLA professor presents newest exhibit at FIG
By Barbara E. Hernandez
Daily Bruin Staff
The room seems like something out of a fairy tale, with rich red
velvet and long braids falling to the floor. "I chose red," says
installation artist and UCLA art Professor Barbara Drucker,
"because it’s enticing. One moment it’s saying come, the other
stop."
Drucker, whose installations have shown in numerous galleries
around Los Angeles and Europe, has had a change of mood in her
newest exhibit at the First Independent Gallery, "Material
Evidence." In her previous shows, also entitled "Material
Evidence," the use of somber colors pointed to grave matters.
"There was a lot about death," Drucker admits.
With her use of the color red, Drucker’s new show takes a
different direction. The exhibit begins with with the Samos series,
"Samos/Infant", "Samos/Grave" and "Samos/Dog." The three works are
objects pressed into frames, all dominantly red, above a square of
astroturf with a photo winking in its core.
The astroturf seems to symbolize her life in L.A., while the red
objects seem more real and a bit more scary. The photos, the only
concrete images, seem to give subtle insight into the piece. The
"Samos/Infant" for instance, depicts a fat and sassy baby, and
above it a red baby dress almost crucified. Yet Drucker admits the
work was less along the lines of crucifixion and more about a
baby’s frustration.
The exhibit continues with the Rapunzel-esque braids that fall
off the wall into pools of darkness, hanging with hardware and
magnet in different shapes and sizes. "Braids are very feminine,"
she says of the art form, "and very sensual."
There is something Old World vs. New World in the strict order
of the braid. Long braided dark hair signifies cultures vastly
different from an American one, and the idea that it can be undone
or unwound is too sexually charged for many religions to allow
women’s hair to remain uncovered
Drucker likes that imagery. She smiles a little. "You know," she
says, "I picked synthetic hair because I thought it was more
truthful."
On the east wall of the gallery, "Velvet Dress/Arm" portrays the
velvet arm of a dress, edged with lace, with two baby doll legs
dangling from it. In Greece, says Drucker, offerings like it are
made in church. "If a man hurt his leg, he would offer a leg at an
icon," says Drucker. Drucker’s legs are much different, with melted
wax and what looks like bruises. Moving closer the viewer can see
those marks aren’t bruises but colored flowers.
The theme of children lingers into the next room, or world, with
"Four Sisters," four seemingly empty frames set about two feet off
the floor. Only when the viewer is across the room can one see the
almost apparitional white dresses.
The number four surfaces again in "Material Evidence I-IV,"a
series of clipboards addressing life’s order and chaos in white and
red.
The culmination of the exhibit lies on the floor of the main
room, the masterpiece that changed Drucker’s entire show. It’s a
braided rug, wound in different colors until it reaches more than
10 feet in diameter. At first she and her husband were determined
to unravel the rug, but after hours of work Drucker had a
revelation.
She was looking at the still vast homemade rug and knew it
wasn’t meant to be. "To me it signified potential," she says,
"womb-like."
The rug does symbolize, like Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings, a
feminine presence and fertility. The rug being taken apart suggests
its growing potential or its dwindling strength, perhaps in
reproduction or power.
ART EXHIBIT: "Material Evidence" by Barbara Drucker. Now showing
at the FIG Gallery until Dec. 10. For more info call Peter Kosenko
at (310) 829-0345.