Warcraft
By Lauren Ross
Upon visiting Elissa Levy’s solo exhibition at Brooklyn Fire Proof, the first thing one encounters when emerging from the stairwell is a small, black symmetrical form on the wall. Eight silhouetted images of soldiers are mirrored and overlapped to fashion an abstract shape that resembles a spoked wheel, snowflake, or mandala. Turning the corner reveals that this form continues down the entire length of the corridor leading to the gallery; dozens of soldiers in cut black vinyl. Helmeted, with rifle in hand, they dutifully cartwheel in a row that recalls military line formation. Inside the gallery proper, the soldiers appear again in two large pieces cut from black felt, installed on the wall and floor, as well as in drawings in black ink and colorful fluorescent marker. The drawings are done on warm gray and tan papers, and the fluorescent ones in particular pop off of this neutral ground, executed simply with a handful of concentric lines in bright colors.
Other works in this show utilize camouflage, a pattern with which Levy has been experimenting for the last several years. The gallery houses a wall-size installation of camouflage prints, digitally manipulated into kaleidoscopic symmetry. They are hung in the manner of wallpaper – alternating sheets of blue, pink, and yellow, with a decorative border of smaller prints across the top and bottom edges. This pseudo-psychedelic expanse of color and pattern has a powerful optical effect. Additional camo pieces are hung in a common area/kitchen beyond the gallery space, including three works printed on canvas and stretched like traditional paintings, and a single loose canvas piece that has been cut up and sewn back together.
The artist’s longstanding interest in camouflage stems from both its origin and its use for disguise and protection. The show’s title Camoufleur refers to the creators of the pattern: artists working for the military, using observation and contemporaneous theories of visual perception to create a visual representation of nature. Over time, camo’s appearance has become ubiquitous; it is seen worn by everyone from faraway guerrilla rebels, to hunters and survivalists, to trendy urban hipsters. Its history is a case of form following form following function. Over the years, many artists, from Andy Warhol to Jim Hodges, have mined its inherent references, as well as its simultaneous loaded and innocuous natures. Levy’s treatment of the pattern’s color brings to mind the military’s variation of hue for different geographic terrain; green for the jungles of Vietnam, tan for the sands of Iraq. Her digital handling of the pattern forces a small section to identically quadruple itself in each piece. This manipulation sabotages the camouflage’s ability to resemble natural forms. Levy’s versions are far too ordered and psychedelic to be functional, too vivid to conceal.
Levy’s encompassing of photography, prints, drawings, and sculpted fabric, brings a range of associations to this show. Her use of cutting and sewing gives her work a relationship to traditional craft, while her predilection for pattern recalls decorative arts and design. Her work marries traditional media with digital technologies, employing a tension between the comparative old-fashioned and high-tech. In Levy’s work, the fracture achieved by cutting a material apart and sewing it back together is transposable with the reordering effects of Photoshop. No matter the material or medium, all pieces sit resolutely in the realm of collage.
The two main subjects of this exhibition, soldiers and camo, present highly manipulated versions of man and nature. Both come from anonymous, stylized types, and are given a visual form that denies individual character and allows little deviation. On one hand, we are reminded of the organic and natural, on the other, we see the highly adulterated and artificial. Levy works in dualities—variation and uniformity, repetition and singularity operate simultaneously. Seeming opposites become almost indistinguishable—as if Levy is questioning whether the man-made cycles of war and violence are an inevitable part of the natural cycles of life and death. And if the mediated form of nature has become transposable with the real thing as the distinction between reality and artifice becomes increasingly ambiguous. And if the extraordinary events of invasion and occupation become for some people a familiar daily backdrop, like wallpaper. And perhaps also if politically charged art and decorative design exist in polar realms. They are questions that are worth exploring, even if not easily answered.
Lauren Ross is the Director/Chief Curator of White Columns.
