Lesley Dill's Text-driven Exhibit, Strange Experience of Beauty, Explores New Vistas
By NICK MALEWSKI
Special to The Star
Words assume influential force and material substance in an invigorating show of 19 works by widely exhibited Brooklyn-based artist Lesley Dill at the Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art.
"The Strange Experience of Beauty" features photographs, prints and assemblages created between 1994 and 2003. The show is up until March 26.
Dill's "Face Pull" best illustrates the power of words.
The ink-silver-leaf-and-wax-on-gelatin print shows taut parallel strings attached to a woman's face. Along the uppermost string and below the figure, a short passage of poetry is written on the print's surface. Giving the work an extra touch of tangibility, Dill sewed thread into it.
In "Mouthful of Words #4," a strong photo-based piece on unframed fabric, Dill strings together letters and the poetry of Emily Dickinson on ribbons issuing from the mouth of a head framed by charcoal rubbings.
In a playful photolithograph called "Homage to N.S.," initials that refer to the late artist Nancy Spero, words are not only rendered visible but are inextricably bound to the tongue. Against a black background, a figure, seen in profile, extends a tongue that appears to have a snaking string tied to it. A line of poetry follows the contour of the string.
For 18 months in the early 1990s, Dill lived and worked in India. "The Air Sings," a standout photo collage, visualizes the sensation of hearing but not comprehending a language. On top of Hindi newsprint, a youth sticks out his tongue swathed in thread.
Dill has said words are a sort of protective clothing. She is known for making sculptural dresses emblazoned with verse. "Poem Dress of Circulation" is the only work here representative of that endeavor. Emotionally cloying but aesthetically absorbing, the paper dress has poetry flowing up and down tributaries that meander from a drawing of a heart.
Elsewhere, text acts as the outermost layer of skin. "The Strange Experience of Beauty," a glossy oil-and-wax-on-photo piece, deftly suggests that words, like skin, possess the ability to shape perceptions of appearances. The title is written in bold black letters across the face of a woman whose eyes are closed as she floats in a sea of darkness.
Even though it includes an assortment of Dill's work, this show is not quite a retrospective. It is, however, an account of her unwavering commitment to continue exploring her ideas in new ways.
