Brave a trip to U of Buffalo Anderson Gallery

Mission partly accomplished:  a visit to U of Buffalo Anderson Gallery to see Candi Girling's Slice of Green sculpture.  Not enough time to go to Albright-Knox to see Anselm Keifer show.  Another day.   And really my plate was visually full with the show at this jewell-like gallery founded by art dealer Martha Jackson.  In the middle of a non-descript suburb on a tiny side street which I overshot and then kaboom there it was.   An expansive glass facade mirroring budding birch trees.

Inside treasures:  I started on the first floor and just looked/admired at many unknown works for my first impression, purposefully not noting who they were by, but some of haunting beauty.  Then, almost in an alcove, without natural light appeared these ghaslty a al Lucien Freud  paintings, done by another MFA student (like Candi) by the name of Su Yang originally  from China.  I succumbed to reading the artist's statement:  paintings of cosmetic surgery, they were.  She compares this to the binding of Chinese women's feet! 

On the second floor, Candi's sculpture, in the most sunlit room .  All manmade materials:  steel frame, glass panes, laboratory like containers containing a slice of green plant life, a pocket of ivy or a tray of weeds.   A carbonmonoxide sensitive microphone enacted a cacophany of traffic and city noise compliments of Aaron Davis musical talents.    

 

Curiously,  Su Yang's and Candi's art seem to cross paths in dealing with the process of dehumanization -  be it a face or a landscape. Candi's expresses the need to add back what is natural with a slice of green;  Su Yang's  - to remove what is natural with the slice of the surgeons knife.  The budding birch trees never looked so good!