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Visionary exhibit debunks stereotypes

October 20, 2005 1:06 am

By SHEILA WICKOUSKI

For THE FREE LANCE STAR

For more than 10 years, the American Visionary Art Museum has shown works by visionaries who do not necessarily have formal training and who are not a member of any school or movement.

The works created mostly by self-taught artists also do not require any particular aesthetic knowledge on the part of the viewer.

The results are sometimes awkward and often less than pleasingly beautiful, but they are always interesting. Visitors might not learn anything about art from these pieces, but they may feel good about what it means to be alive.

The museum's latest mega-exhibit takes on a topic that aims to debunk negative stereotyping and to increase the visitor's ability to see his or her true self.

The entrance is a rainbow archway with thousands of smiles shaped from mirrors, created by Andrew Logan.

Logan's life-sized, mirrored and mosaic "Black Icarus" will permanently occupy the air space in AVAM's central stair. His portrait of Nelson Mandela, also made with mirrors, reflects a series of South African "Apartheid Quilts" on the opposing wall.

These memory cloths are simple but painful, and were created by women who suffered under the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.

Audi Olsen's video, "Where the Smiling Ends," shows tourists in front of Italy's Trevi Fountain. They smile for photos, but, unbeknownst to them, Olsen captured that private second after the camera clicks as they release their smiles. The effect is haunting.

Nancy Burson and David Kramlich's "Human Race Machine," an interactive computerized photo-booth installation, allows visitors to see images of their faces gently morph into each of six different races. Burson invented the technology by which photos of missing children are aged so they can be identified years later.

Mr. Imagination's regal throne is next to this display, under the sign, "Always Remember That You Art the Child of King." Artist Greg Warmack is Mr. I and is best known for his prolific use of bottle caps in creating fascinating works.

Nek Chand used recycled material and debris to create figurines and landscapes for the 12-acre Rock Garden in India, which is the largest visionary environment in the world. Some of these statues share space with towering and colorful paper cutouts of Chinese cave dweller Ku Shulan.

Some of AVAM's message about racial equality in a democratic society can be seen in works like Eddie Kurushima's "Jap-Amer Soldiers Liberators to Dachau."

It is one of a roomful of works depicting scenes of Americans of Japanese origin who were kept in camps during World War II.

At AVAM, the statements and information that accompany the art are part of the total process for assessing the meanings in this exhibit.

For instance, most people might know that there is no genetic basis for race, but how many are aware that an average of one in every 2,000 people is born with both male and female reproductive organs? Or that more than 9 million people, according to a United Nations census, do not have a nationality to legally call their own?

This is only the beginning of what AVAM has to offer in this thought-provoking show.

"OCD" or "Obsessive Compulsive Delight" is a small, separate show that celebrates what some would term a disorder, but also is the key ingredient in the process of generating meticulously detailed and intensely focused works.

AVAM also has a rotating permanent exhibit that includes unique items like the famous Baltimore painted screens, something that is not likely to be seen anywhere else.