"They are both so sexual, so muscular, so sensual. I just really love that comparison," said Brooke Winter-DiGirolamo '05. And what is this comparison? Surprisingly, it is naked girls and dead fish.
Winter-DiGirolamo created a series of large-scale charcoal drawings involving both of these subjects over the summer. "I have been drawing the scraps from fish markets, mostly from Portland, the harbor market and also people. Friends of mine and myself, usually nude, but sometimes not."
Winter-DiGirolamo, who has an abstract video in the upcoming Portland Museum Biennial, decided to go back to traditional drawing for this project.
"I was doing a bunch of other things in the beginning of the summer and experimenting with a whole bunch of things, and I felt like I really needed to get back to observational work. I wanted to work big so it would be more physical and it would be coming more from my body than from my mind. Because I felt like I was getting too cerebral, so Anna Hepler and I decided it would be really good for me to just do really big charcoal drawings and just get dirty and have fun and use my body, and also get back to basics in terms of observational drawing, which I hadn't done in a couple of years."
The drawings have a delicate sensuality, as the raw lines of the fleshy dead fish mimic the voluptuous curves of the naked women lounging below the carcasses. "I hope that it makes [the viewers] have a visceral response as opposed to figuring it out logically," said Winter-DiGirolamo. "I want it to come more from their gut."
On view at the Visual Art Center, Bowdoin College. September 9-23.
Other art shows to check out in the area:
Space Gallery presents: Mark Mothersbaugh, "Beautiful Mutants"
Mark Mothersbaugh, founder of the innovative new wave band Devo, has taken early 20th century photographs found at flea markets, thrift stores and on eBay, and used Photoshop to digitally manipulate the traditional portraits into disturbing mutants. "They are mostly about symmetry and the human form and how we are actually not symmetrical," the Space Gallery curators said. "[Mothersbaugh starts] with something mundane and maybe a little bit cute. Really it's a very minor alteration that changes the atmosphere of it."
The pictures are transformed into a cast of characters evoking the ghosts of carnival freak shows while maintaining the traditional-formal elements of early photography.
Space Gallery September 3-October 16. Located at 538 Congress St, Portland, ME. www.space538. org.
Colby College Museum of Art presents: Contemporary Painting: Curated by Alex Katz
Alex Katz, one of the most celebrated living painters, has selected 22 works by eight contemporary painters from the United States and United Kingdom. This is a unique look at some of the freshest painters through the eyes of a seasoned artist.
"The painters in this exhibition make paintings which are involved in trying to define our culture visually," Katz said to the Colby Museum of Art.
Some of the painters included in this exhibition are Richard Bosman, Cecily Brown, Merlin James, Laura Owens, Elizabeth Peyton and Bill Saylor.
Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, June 27-September 19.
June Fitzpatrick Gallery presents: Greg Parker: New Paintings
It seems like alchemy as Parker transforms wooden panels into what look like bronze sheets using only gesso, graphite and pigment. These geometric paintings, composed of lines and rectangles, resemble polished metals in luxurious reds, greens and golds. The smooth, burnished surfaces of the paintings reveal a quiet glow that subtly seduces the viewer into thinking that the pieces are in fact metallic objects. These labor-intensive works are hypnotizing.
June Fitzpatrick Gallery at MECA September 3-25. 522 Congress St. Portland, ME. www.junefitzpatrickgallery.com.