Edra Soto. “Say Everything,” 2014,
installation view at The Lloyd Dobler Gallery
mixed Media (flags, fans, plastic chairs, beach towels, tape, sand, cooler, pink light, latex paint)/Photo: Michael Soto
RECOMMENDED
Unlike the fictional lead character, Lloyd Dobler, of the eighties teenage classic “Say Anything,” Soto’s rebellious carefree attitude in “Say Everything” is the result of mature and considered thinking, a deliberate expression of the ambiguous nature of desirable objects, and the figurative and administrative commonwealth.
Five verdant flags flutter in the gently constructed breeze issuing from brightly painted red fans that are variously standing or clipped to plastic lawn furniture upholstered with tiger-faced beach towels. A pink cooler, encrusted and filled with glittering pink sand, rests on a short floor-level plinth. Silver tape on the windows mimics the patterns of Puerto Rican fencing screens, a frequent subject for Soto, slicing the evening light into shadows that echo the patterns on the flags.
Edra Soto. “Say Everything,” 2014,
installation view at The Lloyd Dobler Gallery
mixed Media (flags, fans, plastic chairs, beach towels, tape, sand, cooler, pink light, latex paint)/Photo: Michael Soto
The forms of the furniture, fencing and fans fuse into the domestic setting of the second-floor apartment gallery, while the sense of fabricated idealism is emphasized through the bold use of color. Garish pink lighting falling on salmon painted walls creates the illusion that the light outside the gallery space is green, as well as emphasizing the green of the semi-transparent window-sized flags.
Edra Soto. “Say Everything,” 2014,
installation view at The Lloyd Dobler Gallery
mixed Media (flags, fans, plastic chairs, beach towels, tape, sand, cooler, pink light, latex paint)/Photo: Michael Soto
Soto created the patterns of diffracted, geometrical stars and stripes resembling the US, Puerto Rican and Chicago flags in Captiva, Florida at the Rauschenberg Residency. Inspired by the tropical plants on the residency grounds, she used them as the basis for a collage that she photographed and digitally reassembled. The plants also correspond to those that she regularly sees but is forbidden to touch at the Garfield Park Conservatory near her home. The relationship of these locations, all places she has lived—Puerto Rico, Chicago and the wider USA—is addressed through a representation of access to a way of life considered beautiful and desirable.
After years of cautiously avoiding direct confrontation with the subject of patriotism, Soto confronts its iconic image through the kind of superlative idyll that flags represent: a constructed non-place, leaving room for the influences of fantasy, access and imagination. The imitation summer set within a second floor apartment overlooking Polonia Triangle will fittingly be up through early December. (Alyssa Moxley)
Through December 12 at Lloyd Dobler Gallery, 1545 West Division. Saturday hours by appointment through contacting lloyddoblergallery@gmail.com.
Related Stories
Height, Width and Just a Little Depth: A Review of “3-D” at Gallery Victor Armendariz In this group show, a variety of mostly figurative sculptures succeed by being quirky.
Eruptions of Color: A Review of Pooja Pittie at McCormick Gallery Nothing is recognizably depicted, but something like a festive spectacle has been achieved with layers of colorful marks that range from orderly patterns of dots to large, dramatic brush strokes.
Frankie Goes From Hollywood: A Review of Nancy Rosen at Gallery Studio Oh! Nancy Rosen's paintings seem to document women's struggles for identity in contemporary urban America.
Figuration Forever: A Review of Kay Hofmann at Patron Gallery Irony-free and virtuosic, Hofmann's sculptures do not belong in the mordant world of contemporary art.
Anachronism As Abstraction: A Review of Cathy Hsiao at Goldfinch Gallery Defying the bifurcation that often occurs at the intersection of conceptualism and formalism, Hsaio's work is as much about processes as formal aesthetics.
