Mel Chin at Frederieke Taylor

There is a kind of political art that is composed of dense combinations of social, historical and literary references. Because such work relies so heavily on the crib sheets helpfully supplied by the artist, experiencing it often resembles the process of deciphering a word puzzle or hidden code. One ends up admiring the cleverness of the artist more than the effectiveness of the art.

Mel Chin flirts with this danger in Render, an installation and handout that draws on references to current events and suggestive literary quotes to comment on the contradictions of the war on terror. But in the end, the work is far more than the sum of its parts, offering a powerful emotional experience that is all the more effective in its spare presentation.

The visitor enters a room in the middle of the gallery created with sheets of white muslin. On the walls inside, two images face off against each other. A framed painting depicts realistic eyes and mouth on a black velvet ground that suggests a face peering from the openings of a ski mask. The mouth is turned down and a tear is forming in one eye. Directly opposite, crumbled flesh-colored fragments are scattered over the wall and doorway in an apparently random pattern.

Even without extra knowledge, the crumpled fragments convey the horror of exploded flesh, while the masked face reads as s terrorist presence and elicits a shiver of dread and disgust. These initial responses are heightened when one learns that the fleshlike elements are made of wood, paint, salt (from the West Bank) and shredded kuffiyehs (Palestinian scarves); that, in their total mass, they equal the weight of a 23-year-old female suicide bomber; and that they are spread out in a configuration based on a map of the Palestinian settlements in the West Bank.

Another layer of political commentary is added by the fact that the tearful eyes and mouth in the painting are derived from a photograph of George W. Bush. These details, along with the handout containing quotations by Bernard Henri Levy and James Baldwin about the perils of ignoring suffering and the inhumanity inherent in sentimentality, further deepen the emotional impact of the experience.

It is possible to see Render as a statement about American policies in the Middle East. But a broader reading points to the murky nature of good and evil in a world where might is right, and reminds us that the consequence of our failure to mediate between apparently irreconcilable desires is a never-ending tragedy for all.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group