art

Bullseye: Eva Lake’s Targets at Augen Gallery

Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]
Frank O’Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Oh our fascination with the goddess, whether she’s the subject of the myth, the lyric, or the paparazzi’s lens. And oh how complicated it gets when the creator of her image is intimately aware of the power and perils of beauty.

Bullseyed by Eva Lake’s Targets series at Augen Gallery are nostalgic images of glamorous screen goddesses and their contemporary counterparts. As we are reminded of the tradition of the female form as subject of figurative art, we are simultaneously put in the position of treating the woman as object to be viewed and evaluated…she is, after all, in our crosshairs. But Lake knows, and by the simple power of her images demonstrates, that it’s not as simple as all of that. These are, after all, images of women who were/are no doubt highly aware of the power that accrues to them in allowing themselves to be viewed. Like the women in her targets, the artist both owns and critiques the notion of woman as object of the male gaze. It is interesting to note the timely publication of Nancy Bauer’s June 20 opinion piece in the NY Times, Lady Power, using Lady Gaga to consider the oppositional tension between self-empowerment and self-objectification. Lake’s “Target No. 14 (Barcode),” in which all but the shapely legs of the subject are obscured—a white target covers the torso, a barcode, the head—by making its subject anonymous, extends the conversation beyond celebrity to everywoman.

The images Lake creates are political in ways that extend beyond gender politics as in Tina Turner in profile juxtaposed with a German shepherd on a chain leash baring its teeth at a crowd of African Americans. Most frequently, though, they are comment on the personal narratives of Lake’s subjects, Liza Minelli in fine Cabaret form is studded with a cascade of colorful pills, Lindsay Lohan’s in the drink (a bottle) as it were. But the Targets do call out to a feminist artist forebear, la Dadaiste Hannah Höch, whose photomontages, (if typically busier than Lake’s) prominently feature the female countenance and form like Höch’s “Indische Tanzerin,” above. In a way, the Targets are a way for Lake to address and integrate aspects of the whole of capital “A” capital “H” art history into her works via the neatly excised pages of art history books whose fragments frame or provide background for the her ladies.

This has been a long time coming, this show of Lake’s Targets. After all, the genesis of the series occurred when Lake—accomplished artist, former art dealer, writer, and art radio show host—was a teenager, when she and a friend raided the Ashland Rifle Range for paper targets shot full of holes, when her dad owned an antique store that carried vintage popular magazines. And though Lake has been showing her abstract optical paintings for many years, this is Lake’s first Portland solo show of her photomontages. And what timing. When the widespread availability of the tool called Photoshop has made the digital photomontage so ubiquitous, it’s something kids do to amuse themselves; when Portland has seen its share of photomontage this year with Jonah Freeman at Reed College, John Brodie’s work in the Portland2010 Biennial, and Toshiko Okanoue at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, there has just been nothing quite like Lake’s crisply hand-cut montages, whose vintage palette (her way with color is really something), retro imagery, and simplicity of composition make powerful images that feel strikingly Right Now.

See all of Lake’s targets here, virtually, or visit Augen before the 26th.

POSTED: June 22nd, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: augen gallery, eva lake, targets | 2 Comments »

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