REVIEW: “Chthonic Void” Christine Tarkowski

 

Guest post by Brent Fogt.

Glass geodesic domes play a leading role in Christine Tarkowski’s “Chthonic Void” at Devening Projects. The domes symbolize utopian ideals and their failure to take root. The exhibition, by contrast, is an unqualified success.

The main gallery features four of Tarkowski’s glass sculptures, two of which rest on pedestals in the center of the room. Unlike the monumental scale of some of Tarkowski’s past work, the scale of these sculptures is closer to architectural models. Made of stacked, softball-sized glass domes, the sculptures are covered with shiny black liquid that brings to mind chocolate syrup. The stacks seem simultaneously precarious and grounded, unstable and solid, animated and static.

This tension between movement and stasis is repeated in two enormous paintings that surround the sculptures on opposite walls. Composed of overlapping diagonal stripes that form moiré patterns, these paintings vibrate, ripple and bulge the longer you look at them. When the eyes feel fatigue, rest is available at the edges, where raw canvas is left unpainted.

On the wall next to the paintings are two small, embossed works on paper. These pieces, which also contain overlapping patterns, create a subtler moiré effect. This quieter approach is an ideal counterpoint to the larger, more intensely hued works on canvas.

Down the hall from the main gallery is a room completely devoted to Tarkowski’s glass works. The space is stunning. Eleven black sculptures, all a combination of glass on glass or glass and steel, lie on all-white pedestals that span the center of the white room, creating vivid contrasts not only between light and dark but also between glossy and matte.

The sculptures resemble unearthed architectural ruins that have been exposed to extreme heat and are melting, dripping and decaying before our eyes. Some of the drips form pools over sunken areas of the geodesic domes. Others are as thin as string or spaghetti and drape themselves over tenuous, broken grids of steel.

“Chthonic,” in fact, means subterranean—in, under, or beneath the earth. In classical mythology, “chthonic” refers to spirits that dwell under the earth. The show title “Chthonic Void” is especially fitting, because Tarkowski’s glass sculptures seem both worldly and otherworldly—both part of, and separate from, the earth itself.