ArtSeen
TAMARA GONZALES at Cheryl Pelavin Gallery
In her first installation, titled “Panna III,” Tamara Gonzales gathers together a cross section of feast rituals given to those who have “dropped the body.” The entire effect here is one of subdued joy, as the work is organized around altars to Shiva adorned with lush fruits, eggs, and water; to the Virgin Mary with her flowers; and to America’s smiley face, the everlastingly affect-less symbol that repaved America’s psychic roads, which is given a place of honor in this community “puja” party. The sheer sense of comfort and exuberance is accomplished through addition and repetition: Christmas lights, balloons, and party favors all gather around the floor and up the walls and provide glittering effects. Meanwhile, life-sized figures of balloons, painted with the third eye and toothy smiles, sit on chairs with their tongues hanging out, waiting for nourishment. Gonzales’s paintings, around which this installation is organized, are made with an improvisatory approach that incorporates the jetsam of fragments from yoga, Christianity, and even the Dr. Seuss book I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew. Gonzales thus engagingly explores a large subject here: the cross-pollination of objects by cultures for their own set of regenerative concepts, where the dead outnumber the living by a wild margin.
At Cheryl Pelavin Gallery, March 14 – April 29
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Tamara Gonzales: Horrible Beauty
By Amanda Millet-SorsaOCT 2021 | ArtSeen
Tamara Gonzales has spent her life living, experiencing, understanding, and connecting with the indigenous cultures of the Americas, spiritual and ritual practices from India and the Caribbean, and with Magick, as well as undergoing healing journeys facilitated through psychedelic plant medicines, without forgetting her early years professionally decorating cakes while being immersed in counterculture and the punk music circles of the 1970s in New York.
A Study of the Body
By Candice ThompsonJUNE 2022 | Dance
Five rectangular screens hang down like stair steps hovering over the stage of Jerron Herman’s VITRUVIAN. Extending in a diagonal line, each screen displays the same drawing by contemporary artist Chella Man. A big nod to Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man (c. 1490), the image depicts two superimposed sketches of Herman’s body. In an obvious departure from the classical image, the body is drafted as a quick sketch with legs of differing lengths that push past the circular frame, and shorter arms that fail to reach it.
Theaters of the Body: K.J. HOLMES with Tess Michaelson
By Tess MichaelsonOCT 2022 | Dance
As an improviser, performer, and teacher, Brooklyn-based K.J. Holmes draws on the intelligence of the body to explore unknown territories in being and making.
Lincoln Michel’s The Body Scout
By Rone ShaversOCT 2021 | Books
Let’s start by stating the obvious: Lincoln Michel is an enormously talented writer, and one of the things he does exceptionally well is blend genres. I say that because The Body Scout is a mashup of cyberpunk, noir detective novel, and literary fiction centered on the premise of what it means to be human, and well worth the advance buzz it has already received.
