“Loose Lips,” a subversive exhibition by Melissa Stern ’80 on display in the South Zilkha Gallery, brought a unique creative experience to visitors during its opening this week. Stern compiled “Loose Lips” from a book of the same title by taking visual stories from the book and placing them onto the gallery wall.
Walking into the South Gallery, viewers are encouraged to take an exhibition questionnaire to fill out while viewing the show. The heart of the show consists of 13 series of mixed media panels, each panel with four images: the first beginning the story and the remaining three completing the story. Viewers are encouraged to choose their favorite of the three potential endings for each story and record it on their questionnaire.
The panels themselves are variations on themes of the existential and absurd, though they present different conclusions based upon an individual’s relative skepticism. “Willie Was Weary of Wasps” offers a range of personal and apocalyptic choices to the viewer, ending with the scrawled declaration, “death sentence of an empire,” on what appears to be a picket. This ominous tone may also be felt in “Gloria Goes Glam,” in which several renderings of bodies become undone. “Wedge,” the eleventh part of the series, quite literally shows a child jammed between his parents, the ultimate Freudian dilemma.
Figures are expressed in fits of crayon and streaks of color. They are, just like the space itself, unmoving. Our imaginations are intended to create stories from these pictures, but the only connections one can make are to the culture surrounding the characters. This forgotten blonde bombshell, that faded film noir stud—it all rings hollow and a bit callous after one or two repetitions.
Not only are the alliterated titles of each series derivative of Edward Gorey’s books, but the drawings themselves are a strange synthesis of Gorey’s work, “The Simpsons,” and Robert Rauschenberg. The incisive, bitter tone of the 13 shown pieces, however, clashes with the irony of the presented figures being cartoons. In “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” Edward Gorey successfully inverts the whimsy of childhood with a morbid play on words and pictures. “The Simpsons” even more openly embraces the absurd in order to evoke laughter over the plunder of our society. While these elements of playfulness work, the self-consciousness of Stern’s decision to involve the audience makes her art less self-assured in its accusations.
Elements of Robert Rauschenberg’s “Combines” may also be seen here. Stern’s use of encaustic and clippings from old magazines invokes Rauschenberg’s own scattershot approach to the production of potent political and social commentary, yet falls short. Whereas Rauschenberg’s “Combines” derived much of its power out of the magnitude of its panels, Stern limits her own expression to the size of a book.
Moreover, there are age and gender identifications that the viewer may identify in order to enhance the artistic process. Stern is seeking to categorize each viewer that comes into her exhibition, and from this categorization, create demographics for her art. Her desired intention with the exhibit is to involve her audience in the artistic process.
Stern is a mixed media artist; her panels are drawn, sewn, burnt, collaged, and painted with a multitude of different materials, from encaustic and oil paints to old magazine clippings. Two walls are covered with the thirteen stories Stern has created, but the room feels empty. The pieces are crammed into the middle of the wall, vaguely below eye-level, and in effect, the exhibit feels both rushed and empty, contributing nothing to the space but its presence.
The exhibit runs a little long and viewers spend less and less time with each progressive work. The act of voting rushes the audience along, and perhaps this is Stern’s point. Moreover, her aesthetic fascination with the imagination is appealing, even if the resulting works are lackluster.
Nonetheless, it challenges the viewer to question not only the artist’s position in a society so deeply imbedded with pop culture, but also the nature of great art. Despite its shortcomings, the allusions this show makes are important for they reignite our thirst for greater artistic expression. The viewer leaves the show disgruntled, but wanting to create more original and evocative stories of their own.
After its run at the Zilkha is completed, Loose Lips will move on to two undetermined art institutions in different parts of the country. Aiming to incorporate viewer response into the final product, Stern will then publish what she has called an “uberbook,” in which the chosen endings will be revealed. Upon publication, Stern will donate a copy of this book to Wesleyan.
The title chosen for both the exhibit and its corresponding book, “Loose Lips,” was chosen for its intentionally ambiguous allusions.
“The phrase ‘Loose Lips’ is a potent one in our culture,” Stern said. “One thinks of the children’s game of ‘telephone; or ‘whisper down the lane,’ as well as the misunderstandings that gossip can cause. The title is also a reference to ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships,’ a slogan found on World War Two propaganda posters.”
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