Bechtler’s twin exhibits: Daze of line and Rojas
'Clare Rojas: Past the Present' runs through Jan. 19 and 'Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now' is on display through March 3 at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on November 18, 2024. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. And check out this link for Toppman’s archive of reviews in the Ledger.
Two Bechtler exhibits invite audiences to explore the dreamlike subconscious that is surrealism — ‘Clare Rojas: Past the Present’ and ‘Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now’
Contemporary painter Clare Rojas’ exhibit at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art includes pieces that explore the inner worlds of women, such as this piece, titled “Woman In Chair Reading With Fly.” (Photo by Chris Edwards/The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art)
by Lawrence Toppman
What is it about red shoes just now at Bechtler Museum of Modern Art?
They glitter on the feet of a recumbent Mother Nature, peer slyly through malevolent yellow eyes on a pair of high heels, even serve as the soil-coated red bases of sculptures that might be a giraffe and an antelope in the exhibit “Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now.”
And they’re everywhere in “Clare Rojas: Past the Present,” a show of about 100 works that fills the fourth floor. In at least two paintings, they crown the outstretched legs of an unseen corpse. (Rojas, who frequently paints witches as symbols of female empowerment, remembers who wore the ruby slippers in Oz before Dorothy landed.)
Red is often visual shorthand for passion, but what kind? Rojas, solitary and contemplative in many self-referential paintings, may wear them as cheering totems. Kenyan sculptor Wangeni Mutu, who covered the aforementioned acrylic shoes with the red soil of her land, could be making a comment about the exoticization of African women. Julie Curtiss titled her slit-eyed footwear “Wicked” (another Oz-ian reference?) in a possible blend of seduction and authority.
Though Rojas uses more apparently realistic elements than Joan Miró and Jean Arp in the exhibit on the floors below, she also fits the definition of surrealism: An attempt to depict subconscious impulses, waking or dreaming. “Eventually I’ll Go In,” a perfect example, might refer to reluctant self-analysis: The artist stands on a forest pathway that leads to a building rimmed with fire, while two red eyes peer at her from a darkened doorway.
The 10 artists in the official Surrealism exhibit often intentionally mystify us with wavy lines, explosive starbursts, amoeba-like shapes. Marcel Dzama titled his painting “Mother Nature Opened Her Gates … and What Did We Do?” She leans back, smiling like one of Goya’s majas, while peach, green and pink plants run riot around her, and an iridescent parrot smirks by her feet. Inviting, sure, but also disturbing, and what we humans have “done” remains in doubt.
This Julie Curtiss painting titled “Wicked” juxtaposes the fantastical and the unsettling. It’s part of the “Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now” exhibit at the Bechtler through March 3. (Courtesy of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art)
No such vagueness pervades Rojas’ work, all taken from the last five years. Covid-enforced isolation accounts for a lot of the solitary figures in interiors, but the central figure usually seems just as cut off or lonely in exteriors or pre-pandemic pieces.
Men have two functions in these paintings, as inadvertent menaces or active obstructions. In one piece, a man stares distractedly into space, while his extended dog leash slices off the seated artist’s head; in another, “Boulders in My Way,” a skeptical woman confronts six large heads who frown, sneer and menace her.
Yet she doesn’t seek the company of women, either, except the kind who dance in a coven or fly above her, conferring a benediction. The Ohio-born Rojas finds solace in Nature: spiky trees, abstract birds, fractured rainbows. “Serenity,” one of her happiest titles, reveals five shiny black shapes that swim, plummet and soar. (Could they be avian victims of an oil spill?)
Yet even Nature intrudes in disquieting ways: flies, spiders, drooping flowers, the kidnapping of a gosling by a hawk. In one painting, a woman who has climbed a ladder to release a trapped songbird has plunged to the floor, where a mosquito sucks her still-warm blood.
By now, you may be saying, “Whoa! Too dark!” But there’s also a sense of whimsy and/or hope. “My Dream Home” made me laugh aloud: A tiny car wends its way toward a distant shack atop a peak at the end of a steep mountain road, with no other dwellings in sight. “Abstract Love” offers a man and a woman, all sharp angles and blocks of color, making a connection. (Of course, Rojas might be punning on “abstract” in the sense of theoretical, not actual.)
For me, the show’s most striking piece sums up her complexities and contradictions. It’s “Joy and Sorrow,” a bronze sculpture with a black patina. An impassive seated woman cradles a bird in one hand, while another bird kisses her fingers in a gesture seen often in Rojas’ paintings. Beneath the woman’s feet, a flower has been crushed. This time, the shoes are as black as the rest of the figure — but the flower is blood-red.
If You’re Going: “Clare Rojas: Past the Present” runs through Jan. 19 at Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 420 S. Tryon St. “Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now” runs through March 3. Be sure to see the works on both the second and third floors in that exhibit.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews about two times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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