"Getting Emotional"

“Getting Emotional” is a telling exhibition currently mounted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston.

It displays a collection of 14 artists in a mix-media show investigating human emotions as a common thread. Beyond ICA-sponsored panel discussion with psychologists, the show itself is not as much visual discourse on emotions as empirical science.

It is a diverse collection of intensely personal, visceral manifestations of emotions captured as surging high tide, engulfing us.

Upon entering the gallery, one sees “The First People (I-IV)” 1991, a polyptych in oil by Marlene Dumus (1953- ).

This Amsterdam artist confronts the viewer. She shows four, separate panels of infants: three girls and one boy side by side. The infants are drawn the size of adults, lying flat on their back like curious aliens staring back at you. Their bodies are unproportional in with huge heads topping extended bellies. Chubby arms and legs flail as limbs unknowing their life functions.

The pigments used to render flesh are flat and unnatural as the heads also wore incongruous, adult expression. Of the three girls, one shows bemusement, the other shows doubt, and the third shows coyness. The boy infant has a startled, wide-eyed, horrified look leading one to ponder society’s noticeably different treatment in culture and gender socialization.

This polyptych serves as the curator’s audacious gateway, fast-forwarding from infancy to adulthood. The viewer is pushed directly towards what follows: the exhilaration of a male orgasm. 

Peter Hujar, (1934-1987) is an American photographer best known for his nudes.

His gelatin silver prints, “Orgasm” 1969, are four black and white close-ups of a young man’s face. They show four faces in the throes of distinct, intense, sexual escalation: the foreplay, the peak, the grimacing threshold of orgasm, and the mellow, satisfying afterglow. The camera angle is directly over the subject’s face, drawing the viewer into ready, willing participation.

Pleasure turns into pain as viewers part a black curtain, walking into a darken room. There, isolated, one sees and hears Cloe Piene’s (1972- ) “Black Mouth” 2004.

It is a 3-minute looped, large-format projection. The film spews urgent, raw emotions. The sound track is decidedly primal; low pitch, grunts, incomprehensible wailing noises mixed and slowed by distortion, yielding disturbing, gut-wrenching growls of an animal in distress.   

A young girl is seen wearing a black top with spaghetti straps and a pair of cotton underpants. Her long hair, face, arms and legs splattered are smeared with mud. She is crawling on hands and knees, slipping, falling over as she attempts to escape from some unseen threat in a dark forest. Her rage is spent; she is nearing total emotional collapse and helplessness. The viewer is left feeling uneasy, not able to help her.

Back in the main exhibition space, Paul Pfeiffer (1966- ) shows his 1998, digital video loop, “The Pure Products Go Crazy.”

The postcard-sized image is projected from a miniature projector. It is a clip from a memorable underwear scene from Risky Business in which Tom Cruise throws himself face-down onto a couch, kicking his legs wildly in elation; it is looped over and over, nonstop.

Pfeiffer wanted to repeat images ad infinitum so that the original, specific content becomes mesmerizing and thus transformed into something all together different: at once, emotionally vague and meaningless. 

His 1999 companion piece, “Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon),” shows NBA basketball star Larry Johnson, after a slam-dunk.

It is likewise looped, dismantling this victorious moment. This video is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Andy Warhol’s 1986 “Nine Jackies” is a synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas. This 59½ by 48¼ inch well-known work is also in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection.

It shows a composite of nine images repeated and stacked in three rows. The top row is of Jackie smiling before JFK’s assination. The middle row shows Jackie drained of emotions with eyes cast downward and the last row is a close up of Jackie’s face, numb with pain. 

In the range of all possible human emotion, birth and death undoubtedly rank at opposite extremes.

While the world mourned with Jackie and her children, not everyone can comfortably join in observing Catherine Opie’s joy of motherhood.

Opie is a Los Angeles based artist. Her C-print, “Self Portrait/Nursing” in 2004, is a powerful image, accentuating the loving bond of a mother cradling and breast-feeding her child.

Opie cuts a striking figure with the obese built of a fertility goddess.

Her hair is cropped short and butch. She sports a large spiral patterned tattoo, covering her plump right shoulder, down to her bicep ending with a horizontal band of running hounds.

The child Opie cradles, suckling contently on her left breast, appears to be nearing three years old in size spreading prominently across her chest. Above her pendulous breasts is the word: Pervert. It is carved into her flesh with fresh welts standing ready to receive the finishing tattoo ink.

Her in-your-face lifestyle can be alienating to many, even preventing one from seeing it as just a mother’s all-consuming love, bonding with her child.

The root cause of human feelings is too abstract to measure, thus it is nearly impossible to pinpoint in words. But, for a glimpse of our powerful emotions, this show proves that a picture is worth a thousand words.

This ICA exhibition is an artful invitation, a conduit for gallery goers to contemplate the vast range of their own emotions.
   
“Getting Emotional” will run at the ICA until Sept. 5, more information is available at (617) 266-5152.