art
Realism is back—at least that’s the impression given by two shows, by Robin Campo and Cynthia Burke, currently at McGuffey. Within a postmodern context, the quest to faithfully represent the world finds two quite different champions in these artists, a sculptor and painter respectively. Campo’s show, “Offering,” tends more toward the deadpan, while Burke’s “Beast/Beauty” radiates a kind of palpable, living warmth.
 Animal House: Pieces by Cynthia Burke (including "Greater Kudu," above) and Robin Campo seek realism through different means in a pair of exhibits at McGuffey Art Center. |
Campo’s many small ceramic pieces—some on the wall, others on pedestals—are like jewels in a white sea. They’re precious and concentrated, featuring ultra-precise renditions in clay of everything from squirt guns to lemons. Also like jewels, they’re hard and cold: The sentimentalism of Catholic saint statues and the exuberance of cartoon character Pez dispensers are alike drawn into an overarching sensibility reminiscent of science’s dry, exacting gaze.
And yet. Perusing these surreal, shiny little collages—dinosaurs ascending an urn on a Roman column in “Witness,” a duck head on a winged bottle with Mr. Potato Head feet in “Marry”—the viewer begins to discern poetry in the companionships. An apocalyptic vision seems to emerge: rusty cans, nuclear test-site control rooms, bones and the Virgin Mary. It’s as though Campo is showing us a society’s leftovers, carefully rearranged into a code meant for aliens to decipher. The coldness turns into a menacing, meaningful clarity.
Burke’s paintings use realist technique toward a more specific end. As she has for years, Burke here presents images of animals dressed up in manmade things—clothes, sometimes, but always a mantle of symbolism. Objects like pearls, silk purses, and an apple missing a bite take on the significance of totems or fetishes. In “Armadillo Searching for Beauty,” for example, a ’dillo squats in a hazy, stylized thicket, Easter eggs suspended on threads from above.
As for the animals, they are utterly themselves, unselfconsciously existing within their own given bodies. Just as the alchemy of humans’ potions and objects ultimately fails to truly transform us, a white hankie does not make a bighorn sheep into a person.
Which is why it’s astonishing how the gaze of some of these animals is so intensely human. Burke’s water buffalo faces the viewer head-on, with a sheet draped over its shoulders. Presumably it’s standing, but one can easily see this creature as reclining on its back in a bed, like a lover staring balefully up, tender and completely aware.
