Ajna Lichau & Jessica Pezalla
Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art
San Francisco, CA
5 April - 23 May 2007

by Tonya Warner

Two person shows, especially as compared to group show, are a funny thing - we are asked to look not just at the work of each artist, but how one relates to the other.   This can very much skew one's interpretations towards reading each only in terms of their similarities.   For me, however, the shared themes in the current Lichau/Pezalla show came more as an afterthought than an active dialogue in the space.   It is only in the writing of this that I struggle to find a larger picture from this pairing; whether this is good or bad is a moot point.   These two artists seem to share a concern for the artifice of perception, laying bare the mediated distance between the actual thing (be it oceanic forms or the human body) and our idea of it.

The main tilt of Jessica Pezalla's work is what she calls "fake nature," or using paper, felt, wire, epoxy, and string to create pseudo-natural forms.   The delicate sculptures play very nicely with their own shadows, seeming to be completed by their projected other; their seemingly simple patterns are thus given complexity and depth.   These beautifully simplified forms recall a pervasive fascination with the cabinet of natural curiosities, with their allusions to mysterious formations of the deep sea.   In their artifice, however, one is reminded how, despite the easy accessibility to museums afforded by contemporary transportation, most people view such natural forms through images - in books and online - rather than observing the actual objects.   Today there remains a disconnect between the natural and social worlds, especially in urban centers; in Pezalla's work we are reminded of our everyday attraction to yet distance from natural forms.

Anja Lichau is perhaps a bit more literal in her examination of the artifice of images, here her focus being the cameo.   Lichau's work on show takes three different forms: the cameo as a physical shape, expressed through blank ovals and oval-shaped mirrors, photography, and video.   The blank cameos covering one wall, though formally beautiful, do not seem to add much to the discussion; neither do the mirrors, whose high placement means that they reflect only the wall or curtain.   Perhaps if the viewer were able to see their own face, they could share in the oddity of having one's image encapsulated in such a fanciful shape.   There is something about the oval of the cameo that seems to freeze its contents in time - almost stealing away the moment forever - linked, I am sure, to the fact that oval framing devices are found so rarely in the everyday.   The cameo announces itself from the very first as an artificial form.   Therefore, I feel the video works, showing the silhouette of a woman trying - sometimes with great pains - to sit still, are the most interesting of Lichau's works, pointing out the artificiality not only of the cameo, but of the image as surrogate.   The photographs, on the other hand, seems to be a bit disappointing, as the oval shape for the most part seemed arbitrary.   Overall, I did not feel that Lichau fully explored the idea of the cameo, and approached it not as an historical entity, but entirely as a framing device.

The topic of debunking the idea that "natural" equates "truth" and exposing the disconnect between nature and "naturalistic," image and perception, is quite flexible for interpretation and, as this show proves, can produce a range of results.   These are not in any way new ideas, however, in our tech and image-saturated lives, sometimes it is necessary to be reminded.

http://www.wolfecontemporary.com/lichau-pezalla/lichau-pezalla.htm

http://www.fakenature.com/

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