Animalia
Portland
Institute for Contemporary Art
219
NW 12th Ave., 242-1419
Ends
Sept. 17
$3
Malia Jensen
has been featured
at PDX
Gallery,
the Oregon
Biennial and
in Contemporary
Visual Art in the Pacific Northwest.
Animalia, the current exhibition by Malia Jensen
at PICA, is like a deadpan joke: cool, understated and as
rife with insight as it is with humor. The show, which runs
through the summer, is about our modern relationship with
nature.
At first glance, it seems that PICA's gallery has turned
into a spotless menagerie of forgotten garden decorations.
Cute and lovable animal sculptures abound in smooth plastic
and bright, monochromatic colors. Jensen uses paraffin-covered
sculptures of foxes in a number of installations that look
as if they could have just arrived off an assembly line.
The pieces don't betray a single scratch or variation. But
don't let their sleek surface simplicity fool you. Viewers
will have to be observant, taking note of the pieces' titles
and component materials, in order to understand the works
more fully.
Take Jensen's sculpture of a skunk, for example. In form,
it's just a sculpture of a skunk pulling itself from a pool
of water. But the piece, Skunk takes a bath, is cast
in pure white soap. In a single artistic gesture, Jensen
has elevated skunks everywhere from their lowly odiferous
reputation to a new level of Ivory clean. Humor appears
in all the corners and crannies of this show, sometimes
toeing the line of silly. One placard, for the work
titled Mr. and Mrs. Grouse, even lists the materials
as "cow poop."
But it's Beaver Story that dominates the exhibition
and the artist's imagination as well. A side gallery is
dedicated solely to the history of the beaver. Beaver
Story is an 8-foot construction of everyone's favorite
dam-builder in layered plywood. The size of the piece may
seem absurd, but according to Jensen's research it is historically
accurate. During the Pleistocene Epoch, most beavers were
taller than Shaquille O'Neal. This is Jensen's ode to the
beaver state, as well as a sly anti-phallic statement. It
also shows the more insightful side of the show. Beaver
Story is a reminder that there was a time when animals
had more power than humans.
An even stronger piece, Spring Tree, is a walnut
trunk lit by bare lightbulbs attached to its limbs. The
bulbs create dramatic shadows, of the silent horror-movie
variety. While they make a gorgeous image, they also obscure
the tree. Black cords and equipment used to power the bulbs
cover the tree limbs like a parasitic fungus, diminishing
what they're supposed to enhance. While the other works
in the show are lyrical, this one is downright mournful.
It's as if someone's decided to design a new and improved
tree but has forgotten what it is that makes a tree beautiful.
All of Animalia, on one level, speaks to the blossoming
trend of designer nature. Armed with an ever-increasing
knowledge of genetic engineering, humans are poised not
simply to control nature but to restructure it. Animalia
suggests that, as biologic architects, we will not create
a Jurassic Park or Dr. Moreau's island, but something along
the lines of an Anne Geddes photo where perfectly plump
babies recline in a world of impossibly fresh produce and
flowers. We will fashion a bundle of manageable cute. Nature
will be comforting, smaller-portioned, pleasant-smelling--a
clean, well-lighted place.
While many artists have recently addressed people's current
relationship with the environment, Jensen is especially
qualified to tackle the issue. The 34-year-old artist spent
most of her childhood on 50 acres of forested land in the
coastal mountains. Since graduating from the Pacific Northwest
College of Art in 1989, she has lived in Portland and focused
on constructing works about flora and fauna with pre-fab
products. In Animalia, Jensen presents her ideas
with an originality and creativity that won't wash out.
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