AMIS
By JEFF SLAGLE
Staff Writer
The closing ceremonies for Max Below's
July exhibit at CenterGallery began as a
solid, well-crafted piece of performance art,
poetically correct on every crucial base.
The visual and aural qualities of the
show's first "act," though nothing short of
bizarre, remained true to the performance's
title and theme, "Iridescent Meditation." It
was by this virtue, the imagery's purposeful
nature and coherence, that the show ranged
into the fascinating and even the lasting, and
not by virtue of its bizarreness alone.
Picture a long, white room that contains
two musicians, Doug Kent and Ricft Rober
son, one a cellist dressed in white loincloth
with white spirals of grease-paint on his face,
the other a percussionist, also in loincloth
but with more grease-paint and white hair.
The drummer sits cross-legged under a white
lean-to, a huge jawbone beside him. The
music has a primitive yet soothing quality:
cyclical, repetitive, at peace.
Picture now a dancer, Fredrica Hall. One
notices her more slowly, moving in place
behind a triangle of muslin, completely
white except for Tier eyes, pulling at invisible
spectral strings. On the wall opposite her is a
block of white cards, sections of which are
unpinned during the performance to con
note the passage of minutes.
The meditative aspects of such a stage
are obvious. The virginal quality of the pro
fuse white, the sense of comfort that comes
from the ritualized passage of time, the
stark, primitive appearances of the musi
cians and their ethereal, hypnotic sounds,
and spirits revolving in an archetypal vessel,
the dancer.
But when it began to deal with the theme
of iridescency, the show weakened. "Irides
cent" is formed from iris, or "something bent
or curved." In modern usage, it means
"showing rainbowlike colors," which all
makes sense if you think of a lense, flat in
the middle but curved up towards its rim to
separate the white light into primaries.
To summarize, we had been presented
with a white, well-ordered sense of reality,
flat and peaceful. We now stood, medita
tively awaiting the sun's appearance over
the edge of our universe, together with its
splash of color. The lights brightened and. . .
a lull appeared bearing the form of a preach
er, Gordon R. Dragt, sending out a plea to
stop the pursuit of nuclear energy.
The sermon over, we waited expectantly
for the sun to reappear. Where is the rain
bow? But no, a dark, angry cloud, the
dancer, whirled over the rim of our glass
with a frightening, wailing dance, intending
to scare us witless over the inevitability of
the bomb. Her performance was beautiful,
and an original protest, but it was also not
meditative or rainbowlike in and of itself.
The "rainbow" never appeared, unless
you count the preacher's rainbow suspen
ders. It can only be regretted" that the artist
did not see fit to take the performance's
conclusion into his own hands and carry the
metaphor to its logical conclusion.
AW
i . :
f
'-fas
. f f
! " 1
"S j
f- rm nwr mMrrrrr -f t it r m t iimr h i irn iwii inirtfaHirMM rim i in W"""- - -1 i '- " ncrtrr m unirn i tu,3
Performance art In Carrboro
. . .those performing and attending wore only "white.
a m '.m a k a m 4
i - a i t . '
"hi i: IA
3EWS)D J3(3S1(S(3 potest
1
- ?
i
V
v. .
Photos by Peter Krogh
Performance reception
. . .closed Max Below's art exhibit at Center Gallery
in.
Why not have steak
for lunch E VUHYDiDf at
Western Sizzlin. There's
always a delicious
Western Sizzlin steak on
special so we'll always fit
your pocketbook, and
we'll make sure you ;
don't waste any time
- - m
waiting for your meal.
We'll fix it up fast, hot,
and fresh. So come in ;
and try our luncheon
special tomorrow at
Western Sizzlin.
SIZZLIN
SIRLQIH JB.
with our 70 item
salad express
'V'srlVi 11am-4pm
S Monday thru Saturday
Tl I 324 Rosemary St. II
. . Chapel Hill 1
T" J' Tmmmm , I ,u ...,. ... ..L
' .,gTi'TTt:isi:T.cmAiio-
Thursday. July 29, 1982 The Tar Heel 9