Sort of a cop-out first post back, because I had to write this review for a class, but the show is AMAZING, and since I already had something written on it, it seemed silly to write something new...
In her solo gallery show Dwell Ilona Anderson pulls from her personal history, having lived under Apartheid in South Africa. On the gallery's website she describes the interactions in her "improvisational structures" (drawn tree houses) as "quirky and unpredictable". Ilona Anderson "Dwell": A Drawing Installation is on view at the Kingston Gallery in Boston's SOWA district through March 27th (it opened the 2nd). Coming into the gallery on an unforgivably unpleasant and rainy day, I had the pleasure of viewing the installation uninterrupted by the presence of other viewers, and was able to truly enter into Anderson's built world.
The exhibition is comprised of two rooms, the large main room of the gallery and a smaller second room. The first room reads more as an "installation" as the show title suggests, the drawings (as large as ~10x30') flowing into one another and placed at all levels of the wall, while the second room is comprised of smaller (~2-3') drawings hung almost exclusively at eye level, which exist more separately from one another. Here I will focus on the pieces which make up the larger installation.
To enter into the gallery space one must walk up a ramp parallel to the window-front, and walking up, straight ahead is the beginning of Anderson's installation. The first inclination is to get as close as possible, examining the tiny details drawn in fluorescent and glitter pens on black and a variety of gray papers. The drawings are treehouses, awkwardly pieced together in a way that is reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine, except one which probably wouldn't work- the structures seem haphazard at best. They are a mixture of natural trees and odd metal tubing and hinges, which mark them as imaginational structures. In the first drawing there are two figures, a man and a woman, the man sucking on the woman's breast. The image is repeated in the second drawing as well, and the remaining figures throughout the exhibition are for the most part lounging or engaged in various sexual acts.
The paper is thick, almost tangible, and each piece is cut into jagged forms which are then pieced together, the drawings overlapping onto each page. They are not like a puzzle though, the pages run over one another and gaps are left between. Some pieces are connected by thin, scraggly looking shapes. As I backed away from the wall it became clear that the fragmented arrangement of the papers mirrored the haphazard treehouse structures inside Anderson's drawings. Here she has managed to create structures that are simultaneously chaotic and clearly intentional. Every connection, whether it be a strip of paper or logs tied together in ink, no matter how crooked or strange, has the distinctive touch of the human hand.
Being carried through the dream-like narrative (I say dream-like because the drawings are so obviously unrealistic- but as if dreaming they are deceptively believable while viewing them), I begin to recognize the fluorescent and glitter lines under the gallery lights as gel pen, the connection to my own childhood furthering the fantastical feel of the drawings. The brightly colored lines are contrasted by Anderson's use of black ink, both in line work and in fields of black, often on black paper, creating an effect that looks almost like velvet.
The escapist nature of the drawings begins to be interrupted as I begin to notice strange things happening within the drawings. It starts with a woman who is hanging from a hook by her braided hair. Once attention has been drawn to her hair, I begin to notice braids all over the drawings, both attached to heads and independent. Suddenly it becomes apparent that much of the "rope" in the drawings is actually braided hair, such as on a rope ladder and connecting parts of the treehouses. The hair ducks in and out of the drawings through suspicious holes, which appear also in places where strange liquid seems to be seeping in. In one section a naked woman knits, and towards the bottom her knitting dissolves into a mass of fluorescent liquid, disappearing into one of these holes. This melting fabric is repeated in other places, in one drawing a dress seeps off a figure. Another figure wears a mask and balances four others on her head. The surreal imagery seems to be pulling from some sort of mythology, whether it is one that is personal or cultural I could not guess, but the imagery is strong, and curious.
Looking at the pictures online (before coming into the gallery) I had been skeptical of Anderson's use of the word "installation" in the title of the exhibition. I realize that the term installation does not require that the work be 3D, however in my experience what I would truly consider "installations" were works that could be experienced, a physical space that could be entered into. The idea of a "drawing installation" seemed sort of contradictory, perhaps a word that was only being used to describe the way the works were laid out on the wall.
What Anderson has created however, is truly an installation. Aptly titled "Dwell", the drawings are not only of dwellings (treehouses) but they allow the viewer to almost literally be inside them. To dwell for a moment within them. Through her drawings, Anderson has seemingly tapped into some kind of shared imagination. The viewer is acutely aware that she is looking into Anderson's experiences and mind's eye, but she is there. Anderson has pulled us into her own world, but in it she is speaking to shared experiences; the quiet painful moments, the quirkiness, feelings of instability, joy, sex. In her drawings she has captured a spectrum of human existence that the viewer is able to enter into, and I believe that this is her goal in creating these spaces. It is as experiential as something you could physically be inside. So installation? I say yes.
If you're in Boston you can check out Dwell at the Kingston Gallery (it's only open through the 27th though!)
images: kingstongallery.com & shambhalatimes.org
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