Maria Porges’ exhibit runs through Jan. 3. Photography by John Wilson White, PHOCASSO.
Artist Maria Porges knows something about bad hair days. The di Rosa Preserve: Art and Nature is currently exhibiting the artist’s “After the Age of Reason: New Work by Maria Porges,” a collection of recent drawings and sculpture that will be shown publicly for the first time.
With genealogical debt to illustrator Edward Gorey (the seeming source of much of filmmaker Tim Burton’s inspiration), the imagery and content in “After the Age of Reason” represents a substantial departure from the body of work Porges has been engaged in in recent years, but reprises some materials and ideas from her earlier work – namely, the idea of books as a material for sculpture and the combination of modeled and found elements. The exhibition presents drawings, some of which incorporate fragments of actual books, and wall-hung sculpture cast in a variety of materials, including wax backed with plaster, bronze and cast lead crystal.
Through the use of visual devices such as a frame of curtains, Porges’ drawings and sculpture invoke a kind of theatrical narrative. The role of Logic is played by books – containers of things that are believed to be true, while hair – a symbol of disorder, excess and fashion – steps into the role of Intuition. Both are aided at times by small girls wearing astonishingly large wigs. A series of sculpted children’s heads, their expressions and proportions developed out of digitally altered photographs, evokes the meeting place between cuteness and the grotesque.
In the graphite on paper “(Sororal) Twin Screamers,” two tiny female figures rest atop an open rectangle with one of the two figures screaming. The twins are entangled in a bizarre and enormous head of curly locks that draws its inspiration from historic illustrations of exceptionally large, 18th-century-style wigs. The finely detailed tresses become the image’s focal point, in which reason succumbs to intuition. Also featuring two small children, “Laughers” appears pulled from the pages of a children’s book gone-awry. Caricature-like faces and hair stretched impossibly high in thick, twisting tangles enmesh the figures.
Porges, who holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Chicago, is well known in the Bay Area for her evocative sculpture in a range of different media as well as for her work as a writer and critic. Her art has been exhibited nationally and is included in important private and museum collections. Porges received the prestigious Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1992.
“After the Age of Reason: New Work by Maria Porges,” opened in the preserve’s Gatehouse Gallery this month and runs through Jan. 3, 2009. The Gatehouse Gallery is open from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. The di Rosa Preserve is located at 5200 Carneros Highway 121, Napa. Admission is $5 for di Rosa Preserve members, $10 for general admission. For more information, call 707.226.5991 or visit www.dirosapreserve.org.
