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Unhappy endings
‘Romancing the Wreck’ at the Sert Gallery
BY RANDI HOPKINS

It’s unsettling to consider how quickly the anxiety produced by impending war just a few months ago has given way to the anxiety produced by all the usual stuff — the economy, the unrelenting rainy weather, etc. — but it’s important to remember the urgency of those Bigger Issues even now that Code Orange has (temporarily?) retreated to Code Whatever and Iraq seems a bit farther away once again. It was in the tense atmosphere of early 2003 that Harvard University Art Museums contemporary curator Linda Norden began to put together an unusual exhibit rooted in the uncertainty we all experienced when the drawn-out threat of war "interfered with our ability to visualize a future," as her press release states. The results are the exhibition "Romancing the Wreck" and the video program "Looking Away," both opening at Harvard’s Sert Gallery this Saturday.

"Romancing the Wreck" presents two series of contemporary prints recently acquired by Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum. "The Russian Ending," made in 2001 by British artist Tacita Dean, comprises 20 black-and-white photogravures based on postcards that the artist is said to have collected going through flea markets in Berlin, where she rummaged through views of World War I battlefields and other unidentified scenes with an eye for dramatic depictions of tragedy and failure. In creating her series, Dean reimagined each image as if it were the final scene of a film, inscribing each with "stage directions" to heighten its theatricality and also to raise questions about the relationship between truth and fiction, what the camera saw and what we see. The title of the series refers to the early Danish filmmaking practice whereby films exported to Russian audiences had different endings from those exported to the American market because the Russians were said to prefer their endings tragic.

Paired with Dean’s work is the series "Connecticut Ballroom," which was made in 1976 by American artist H.C. Westermann, who served in the US Marine Corps from 1942 to 1946 and witnessed bombings and kamikaze attacks close at hand. His experience influenced this group of seven woodcuts, which employ some of his favorite symbols: anchors, death ships, shark fins, airplanes, and icebergs. For the Sert’s video wall, meanwhile, four films have been gathered under the theme "Looking Away," a term borrowed from German writer W.G. Sebald, who was attempting to describe the state of the German people after World War II. Chris Marker, Cai Guo Qiang, Aleksandr Sokurov, and Fiona Tan all attempt to construct a narrative or cohesive image out of the fragments of an unspeakable event, from shipwrecks to mushroom clouds.

Moving from melodrama to just plain drama: Oni Gallery, which has been presenting wild programs in all media at a dizzying rate lately, has turned its attention to the place where art and music collide, and the result is the show "Artrockart," which closes this Saturday with a performance that promises to be audio as well as visual. Featured mixed-media artists are Welcome Home (three guys from Boston’s Museum School), Michael Ledbetter and Jeff Galusha (a collaboration born of comic books and GI Joe dolls), Jay Hiekes (from the Minneapolis music scene), and Forcefield (darlings of the 2002 Whitney Biennial).

"Romancing the Wreck" and "Looking Away" are at the Sert Gallery in Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, June 28 through August 3. Curator Linda Norden gives gallery talks June 28 at 11:30 a.m. and July 20 at 2 p.m.; call (617) 495-9400. "Artrockart" is at Oni Gallery, 684 Washington Street in Chinatown, through June 28, with a closing reception and performance from 8 p.m. to midnight; call (617)542-6983.

Issue Date: June 27 - July 2, 2003

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