ART CITY Cool Views Exhibits Take Sociological Looks at Refrigerator Doors, Nature

By MARY LOUISE SCHUMACHER

We bought a new fridge last year, and my significant other and I have been filling the front of it with stuff, as many of us do, ever since.

A recipe for turkey meatloaf from Real Simple magazine (mine). Magnets in the shapes of guitars (his). A finger puppet that looks like Frida Kahlo (mine, from him). A concert flier. Art exhibit cards. And, a photographic triptych of Ken’s son and his friends.

What is it about the gleaming monoliths in our kitchens that compel us to pin paraphernalia to them? What do these collections of curios say about us?

This seemingly mundane but somehow creative thing we all seem to do is the subject of a project created by artist Paul Druecke called the “Cool White Cube.”

He has been taking photographs of people’s refrigerators, blowing them up to near-fridge scale and making refrigerator magnets out of them — ice box portraits, if you will. And a collection of these has just gone on view at the Green Gallery, 631 E. Center St. (through Oct. 11).

Druecke, as much an amateur sociologist as an artist, explores something people do unknowingly and often to reveal telling details about human nature. As is often the case with Druecke’s work, there are competing notions of familiarity and distance in these photos of fridges, which stand alone, floating against a black ground, their context entirely cropped away.

It’s irresistible, the urge to “read” them.

Who is that little girl whose pictures cover the old, brown fridge, wearing a giant bouffant wig in one and riding a horse in another? Did she draw that tree that’s tacked up with an orange plastic W? Is the Falcon Bowl calendar a clue — a budding family living in Riverwest, perhaps?

What about the one with the Air India sticker, a “Life Takes Visa” ad, ripped from a magazine, and a photo of a guy cleaning a pool? Who drew the monster on a Post-It? Does the campy picture of John McCain betray a household of Republicans or Democrats?

What about the skinny Kenmore with the spa gift certificate, a postcard of the “Vicious Circle” from the Algonquin Hotel in New York and a fortune from a cookie I can’t quite make out?

Creative display

It’s a kind of looking that we all do. And with the sense of remove created by the gallery setting, it makes us mindful of the rapid and sophisticated ways in which we create meaning from objects, the ways in which we fashion our ideas about and even summarize people, for better or worse. It reminds us, too, that we’re constantly crafting composite profiles of ourselves that go way beyond Facebook.

Also, by taking these galleries of the masses into a gallery, Druecke equates the artfulness of the icebox and the cool white cubes otherwise known as the gallery and museum scene, elevating the former and perhaps making sense of the latter by bringing it down to earth.

2 views of nature

Over at the Armoury Gallery, 1718 N. 1st St., Minneapolis-based artists Erika Olson and Joseph Sinness have art on view (through Oct. 4).

Plump seeds and pods erupt across the page in an ecstatic surge, a cannonade of strange, organic matter gushing and commingling, in Olson’s gouache and graphite works.

That this rapturous bursting, an illusion to reproduction, both plant and human, is restrained into submission by Olson’s almost computer-like fine lines, flat areas of color and subdued pastel colors creates an intriguing tension. The stop motion-like, precise manmade-ness of the scene demands careful inspection and begs the question: what is more beautiful, naturalism or idealism?

Nature as evil

What hurtles and collides in Sinness’ visual garden, as opposed to Olson’s stuff of earth, is more of the good-and-evil, metaphysical sort.

Nature is on a punishing rampage, doing unprecedented things in many of Sinness’ color pencil drawings.

Giant sea barnacles appear to seize a red AMC Pacer in its tracks in one piece, while a monster, an amalgam of worms, weeds, bugs and fangs, prepares to pounce on a rabbit, unaware and innocently chomping on flowers in another.

“Clouder” is a violent, upward outbreak of cat heads, all writhing, each one emerging from another like bizarre appendages. Imagine an epic cat melee concentrated into a single, explosive heap.

There is a lush, fullness to this odd cornucopia of kitties, too. With ears perked, their blue and orange Bette Davis eyes dart this way and that, as if they’ve got prey in sight. The battle of evil and light is rarely this much fun.

Voice your opinion

One last thing. With Gallery Night & Day less than a month away, I wanted to invite you to be part of an interactive, online feature.

Here’s what to do: Send me an e-mail at mschumacher@journalsentinel.com with: an image of you (JPEG), your name and a phone number, so we can verify your identity. Then, call the Art City phone line — (414) 223-5175 — no later than Oct. 9, and leave a message that goes something like this: “Hi, this is (say your name), and I’m excited to see (name a show) this Gallery Night & Day because (tell us why).”

If you need a listing of events, you can find one at my blog (www.jsonline.com/links/artcity), on the right side.

Some quick rules: If you’re organizing a show or in one, tell us about something that someone else is up to. Have fun with it. Be relatively quick. What we’ll do: Create a Web page with a grid of all of your faces that readers can click on and hear your messages.

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