The young women in Laura
Ball’s new paintings appear exnihilo,
as though inexplicably transported from
their daily grind into a utopian jungle
where horses, rams, and lemurs await a
playful battle.
Showing both oils and watercolors, Ball
displays the breadth of her talents. The
canvas works recall Sigmar Polke’s
sketchy, disappearing figures, but with
more focus and direct narrative.
Her delicate watercolors demonstrate
her craftsmanship and restraint. The natural
rendering of the girls and animals contrasts
with other water-thinned elements breaking
apart into abstract areas of hazy color.
Each figure maintains a weight and solidity
in their airy, vacant environment, which
gives them the feeling of dreams or wild
visions. They seem to bleed through the
empty fibers of the paper and into our
world.
Armed with squirt-guns and pointed fingers,
and atop the unusual work animals, the
girls engage in a brightly colored chaos
that ranges from light, ironic glee, to
a darker, unexpected violence. These are
not the simple fantasies of little girls,
carrousels and candy, but those of a slightly
older, not yet settled age when fear and
responsibility begin to claim the minds
of young people.
Here, the only realities will be manufactured
by the inhabitants. The girls’ excitement
seems uncontrollable. Their arms flailing,
legs kicking off the sides of horses,
and laughing so hard it must hurt, they
are clearly releasing a pent-up cache
of energy and creativity. Their newfound
freedom implies a prior oppressor, and
the mostly negative space into which these
dream-like renderings emerge hint at an
external absence.
With this oppressor confined to the blank
margins of the page, there remains no
hindrance to the ultimate enjoyment of
the girls. Except themselves of course.
The dissonance created between their formerly
internal and external realities falls.
And where much responsibility is given,
failure is rampant. The girls are affected
by this “play” in extremely
different ways. Many seem emotionally
distraught and victimized.
Whatever their individual oppressors
in the real world, they have clearly not
escaped them all. They project their own
fears onto each other, as they are clearly
not endangered by squirt-guns or search
parties with walkie-talkies. And others
seem to be putting too much threat behind
these same toy weapons, grimacing as they
pull the imaginary triggers.
The difficulty for some of these girls
seems to lie in their inability to understand
why they still feel afraid in their collective
fantasy. If they feel fear, then there
must be someone to be afraid of. And without
the boring job to hate, or the overbearing
parents, these young women seem to be
in the throws of their own developing,
and sometimes self-destructive psychology.
—Michael Kiser [mkiser@sedaqa.com]
Laura
Ball: Wargames (Don't Try This
At Home)
Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago
Oct 20—Nov 25, 2006
www.laurasgallery.com
www.petermillergallery.com |
