At first glance, Sassafras gallery appears to be no more than another weathered storefront on the edge of the Waverly community. Across the street from the bustle of the farmers' market, however, the early Saturday sun glints off the display windows, drawing the eye to the array of color within. Sitting slightly off the beaten path, in the zone between the residential and commercial areas of the community, Sassafras has attempted to do its own thing since its opening last October.
The gallery's current show, "Reflection," a collection of multimedia works by Curt Iglhaut, focuses upon the role of light in visual art and the many effects that can it can produce. Iglhaut's style itself reflects the efforts of earlier artists who worked with light, such as the Impressionists, yet grounds itself in the artist's own intentions. For the artist, the exploration of light has been an ongoing interest over eight years, one of aesthetic and spiritual importance.
In works such as Head Study, Iglhaut uses a few gestural lines etched into a lacquered piece of stainless steel to create a face. The features come alive through the reflective surface and the varied texture of the facial lines. The outline of the face and lip are composed of thin, smooth lines, while a rougher, ridged line forms the nose; the discrepancies are appropriate not only because they create variations in the face that might naturally exist. In Cigarette, the artist also demonstrates how the light that falls on a face is affected by the person's expression or can even help to create an expression. Cigarette portrays a tough, gangster-type figure with nose and ear piercings and a cigarette protruding from his thick mouth; the rhinestones glued on for eyes come alive with a demonic, discomforting intensity.
Another portrait, Composure, is painted on a picture plane built up in a literally cubist style with small blocks of wood pieced together at varying levels. Again, Iglhaut uses rhinestones for the eyes; but here, the jewels, along with the bright spectrum of colors that create the figure, give the person a sense of experiencing some sort of revelation or ecstatic state. The cubism aspect of the work references Picasso, one of Iglhaut's self-professed influences, who, like Iglhaut, experimented with new ways of seeing. One of the things that seems to make Iglhaut's work so accessible is the way he appropriates the styles of recognizable artists and translates into more folk-art creations of his own.
One of the more striking aspects of "Reflection" is a series of works dealing with hands, all made with lacquer on fiberboard. Each piece is layered with an imprint of the artist's hand, one or more blocks of solid color and perhaps some type of patterning, all of which become more or less apparent as light hits the work at differently viewed angles. For example, Hand Series #5 has a handprint with broad rectangles of orange and yellow shades layered around it, the imprints of nails scattered across the entire plane. Beyond the interest of their geometric repetition, the nails might reference fingernails; or, taking it to a more spiritual level, the nails driven into the hand at the time of crucifixion.
Iglhaut's fascination with hands, as he explains, extends not only from the key role of hands in creation, but also looks back to the very origins of art, in which cave artists would paint around their hands to leave their shapes, like "signatures," upon the cave walls. Iglhaut calls the modeling of light the "true chiaroscuro," manipulating the way light acts on a surface through his use of differently textured materials, three-dimensionality, and artistic technique.
Furthermore, the artist notes, he relies upon the inevitable element of change and instability of form inherent in light (for example, the way that light within a room changes as the sun rises and sets over the course of the day), principles that also guide Iglhaut's own Buddhist philosophy. Although Iglhaut is not unique in his exploration of light in creative expression, he brings to it a spiritual dimension that is often missing from much of modern art's more commercialized productions.
Whether or not Sassafras becomes the venue for art made for art's sake or remains just another storefront gallery is yet to be seen, but either way, it's off to a solid start.
Sassafras Gallery is open Saturdays 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. or by appointment. It is located at 3200 Barclay St., Baltimore, MD 21219 (410) 366-6467. "Reflection" runs through Oct. 20.
