"Where Art Thou," an exhibit now on display at the Woods Gerry Gallery, takes you on a sculptural journey through the eyes of eight recent Rhode Island School of Design graduates. While you might not enjoy every stop along the way, you will be kept on edge by the unsettling contrasts found between each room, artist and work and the next.
The gallery building is surrounded by mystical foliage and displaced sculptures in its front yard, including a massive stone sphere lying in front of the main entrance.
The exhibit's title reveals little about its content. To those for whom the word "sculpture" evokes Greco-Roman stone pillars and busts, a brief passage through "Where Art Thou" will provide a grounded overview of contemporary sculptural genres - there is nothing even nearly "traditional" to be found.
The exhibit's unsettling atmosphere stems from the contrasting mediums and styles of each artist, with works ranging from fort-like concrete blocks and animals with an additional posterior in place of a head, to wooden spear-like shafts and an antiquely ornamented mantelpiece. Not all the works are three-dimensional sculptures. There are also drawings and sketches, and one of the room's walls is covered by a series of enlarged photographs.
The eight RISD alums whose art is featured still live and work in Providence. Although they all work independently, most of them are recent graduates who knew each other from classes.
"I Love You" by Jon Laustsen, the first piece on display as you enter the gallery, sets the tone for the journey to come. Laustsen's sculptures are otherwise almost all untitled, unfriendly and not evocative. For the most part, his works are composed of cast concrete blocks arranged in orthogonal shapes with steel nails sticking out of the top ledges of the miniature forts.
Lu Heintz sharply contrasts Laustsen's angular work with curvy, forged steel eruptions. The dissimilarity is particularly evident because both artists' voluminous works are located in the same room. A globular, irregular lump of steel hangs suspended from the ceiling at eye level. The piece is titled "They said blacksmithing is a dying art" - an allusion to RISD's removal of blacksmithing from its sculpture program, that is repeated in all of Heintz's titles.
In contrast to the other rooms in the gallery, the smallest one is dimly lit. This dark room hosts the work of Glenn LaVertu. Most prominent are two glowing glass cases. From a distance, the cases glimmer indistinctively, specked with fluorescent orange, teal green and marine blue. Upon closer look, the boxes appear to be terrariums, both the containers of a sculpture and sculptures in themselves.
Atop the terrariums a black light shines on the colored objects below - an intricate setup of plastic panels, paint, diagrams and props. The left case displays a flight simulator, while the right one depicts an allegorical engine constructed of cardio-pulmonary models.
"Drum and case: a traveling sculpture," a piece by May Yao, consists of a drum-shaped suitcase made of wood, fiberglass and a beige patterned leather somewhat evocative of the Louis Vuitton brand. The work is the centerpiece of a room whose walls are covered by enlarged photographs of Yao posing with the drum case in front of renowned art museums all over the world.
The largest room in the gallery hosts the works of four other RISD alums. These pieces are just as bizarre and lyrical as the others, incorporating rusty shoes sitting in a basin and taxidermy animals displayed among fern and walnut arrangements. Not all of the works in "Where Art Thou" are equally appreciable, but most are at least perturbing if not also amusing.
"Where Art Thou" is on view through Oct. 30 at the Woods Gerry Gallery, on the corner of Prospect and Meeting streets. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
