Monday, July 24, 2017

Phantoms and Fragments: The Art of Lana Crooks

“A Memory” is the new exhibition by Lana Crooks at Albuquerque's Stranger Factory Gallery. Crooks’ self-proclaimed “no guilt specimens” engage in wistful mimicry, fashioning the glass imprisonment of bones and insects in lieu of actual cadavers. Grinning feline skulls rest amongst serpent vertebrae, death’s head moths and human jawbones. These textile sculptures divulge the delicate murmurings of a gothic crossroads through every twist of fabric and jeweled embellishment. Hyperrealism is diffused by an echoing softness; we are pulled in by a promise of reality, then spirited away to a curious liminal space. The titular “Memory” serves us well: like memories, Crooks’ pieces are phantoms hinting at a greater whole yet confined to their fragmentary netherworld.
One main thread in Crooks’ work is a coupling of the floral and skeletal. The flowers’ apparent freshness suggests a cycle of death and rebirth, of human remains succumbing to the natural world’s stronghold. However, this imparts a paradox as flowers are classic ephemeral symbols. Many a Vanitas painter paired flowers with bones, asserting 17th-century fables of inevitable decay; hardly a moral warning, Crooks’ pieces are instead elegant plays of form and fragility.
One such piece reveals a silver bell, evading the grasp of bony fingers yet fastened to a wrist with golden rope; the wrist ends in a floral array, the rope arching above to halo the arrangement. The hand’s downward stance is enigmatic as well, evoking perhaps a sailor’s untimely plunge to their ocean sepulcher. The bell reads as a cherished object that the sailor dies to protect, or a sinister talisman that dooms its owners to watery depths. Either way, the bell’s manmade endurance upsets the natural temporality from which it dangles. The question of “precious” thus becomes myriad. While we may treasure a sentimental relic, our own bodies beg a more pressing preservation; as Crooks’ bodily remains are actually fine art objects, they doubly require safekeeping.
In “Forgotten,” a skull is nestled amongst dark leafy offshoots and a descending twirl of ebony hair. Crooks worked her own hair into some accompanying flowers: this bodily reality supports the skull's bodily illusion, tugging her fabrication back to some murky actuality. It is through this hair that Crooks further reinvents the specimen. Lining a scientist’s wall, a row of speared butterflies describes nature’s frigid subjection to posthumous scrutiny. In contrast, Crook’s specimens suggest death yet pulsate with a life-affirming inventiveness. By not simply creating the work but embedding literal parts of herself, Crooks poses the specimen as a unique snapshot of personhood. The hair’s hidden subtlety moreover alludes to a layered mindscape, stressing again the show’s “Memory” namesake. Although parts of ourselves may be forever relegated to memories, Crooks’ work invites a receptive traipse amid nostalgia’s enrapturing caverns.
“A Memory” is at Stranger Factory until July 30th.










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