Word: motif
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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SUCH A solemn opera is bound to be slightly melodramatic, but this cast manages to avoid it somehow. The problems, however, include a few weak stage blockings, causing overcrowding in the corners of the stage. The white vs. black costume motif molds the opera into a fairy tale rather than allowing it to unfold like a mystery...
...tribal bracelet, but with more sculptural presence. On the other, one of the best pieces in the show is Alvin Loving's wall hanging of sewed, dyed canvas, Shades of '73: Composition for 1980, whose variegated strips are like a moody, floral version of a constructivist motif and seem to make no perceptible reference to Africa...
...most mysterious piece in the show (and the least reproducible) is Victory Over Sin, 1980, a room designed by West Coast Artist David Hammons. What one sees, by the light of a yellowish ceiling lamp, is three gray walls covered with a repeated motif of two kidney shapes, each with a pair of fuzzy black dots, which, on close inspection, turn out to be human hair. The floor has sprouted barely visible wands and reeds, no higher than low marsh grass, each painted in bands of primary color and adorned with more of the same hair. A burial site...
Another convincing oddity is the work of Simon Read, whose bizarre photographs-the face distorted and stretched, like a rubber mask-are done with elaborate bellows-and-pinhole cameras that he makes himself. Taken as serials of the same motif, in accordance with the rotation and expansion of the camera, the photographs assume a shifty, hallucinated look...