05/29/2003

They dream of success, but they also yearn for escape. They're comfortable with technology, but they also enjoy working with their hands. Their confidence level ranges from quiet assurance to downright cockiness. But they also worry about current events such as war, politics and the economy.

Above all, they're eager to prove that the last two years -- to say nothing of a small fortune in tuition money -- haven't been spent in vain.

Those are some of the mixed messages that await visitors to this year's "Annual Graduate Student Exhibition," which opened last week at two locations: the RISD Museum on Benefit Street and the new Sol Koffler Gallery on Weybosset Street (across from Johnson & Wales's downtown campus.)

As it turns out, the bi-polar format seems to suit this year's graduate show, which alternates between polished, professional-grade work, especially in the fields of jewelry, architecture and graphic and industrial design, and more rambunctious (and occasionally raunchier) forays into the brave new worlds of video, installation and political art.

Of course, consistency has never been the grad show's strong suit.

Unlike the oft-maligned Whitney Biennial, which in some ways it resembles, the "Graduate Student Exhibition" doesn't pretend to represent a curatorial or institutional vision. Instead, it's more like a two-week house party, with everyone doing his or her own thing.

This year, though, it's a house party that can't seem to make up its mind. Does it want to rave on all night long? Or does it want to pack it in early and go job-hunting in the morning?

PERHAPS THE MOST obvious example of the show's conflicted emotional state is Julie Brunner's Escape, a blown-glass ladder that's one of the first things you see as you enter the museum's Daphne Farago Wing.

Ladders, of course, are traditional symbols of success (the corporate ladder) and spirituality (Jacob's ladder), as well as escape. But this one, attached treehouse-style to the Farago Wing's ceiling, is made of glass -- a fragile material that could easily come crashing down on the climber's head.

Like most of the show's 100-plus art works, Escape is presented "as is," with no background statement or explanation. Still, if you're planning to make an interpretive assault on this year's "Graduate Student Exhibition," Brunner's breakable ladder is a good place to start.

It nails the show's underlying mix of ambition ("Look out, world, here comes RISD's Class of 2003!") and anxiety ("Please, Mr. Bush, don't start another war, at least until the economy improves!") as neatly as anything else on display.

Brunner's entry is joined by several other installation-style pieces, including Christopher Deris's Intimacy Machine, a playfully perverse work that suggests a kind of X-rated Rube Goldberg contraption, and Dylan Palmer's Skin I'm In, in which a video monitor shows pictures of the artist tooling around with a huge ball of masking tape. (Mind you, I'm not saying that a big wad of masking tape is necessarily great art, but at least Palmer seemed to be having fun.)

I was less impressed with REM Map, a portentous conceptual art piece by an artist who goes by the name of Jecca. All I remember is that it involved placing photographs inside the fuel caps of cars, then sending the cars off in all directions. It left me spinning my wheels.

UPSTAIRS, THE FOCUS shifts to more craft-based art forms. Among the highlights are Hongsock Lee's angular Shadow brooches and rings, Victor Visockis's ceramics in bright Fiestaware colors and a pair of handsome checkerboard tables by furniture-maker Andrew F. Osikas.

I also enjoyed Seema Goel's Aspiration: Breathing for Peace, which gently expands and contracts in response to a motorized air pump, and Tanya Zuzak's untitled wire sculpture, which suggests a tiny hurricane (or a giant Slinky) embedded in a gallery partition.

The show continues in the museum's Waterman Galleries, where highlights include Garima Panika's iridescent jacquard-woven fabrics, Christina Stanton Ruhaak's pastel-colored coats and Emily Hazel Mills's sleek felted-wool party dresses.

Also good are Amber Vera Mark's harrowing photographs of American Nazis (including one particularly striking picture of a little girl wearing a swastika-emblazoned blouse) and David Allyn's politically incorrect coffee mugs and dishes.

As for the show's downtown section, look for Jeffrey Dalton's Flocking, which features a spooky flock of life-size ceramic crows (paging Mr. Hitchcock) and Laura Jacobson's Due Process, which pokes fun at the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded alert system (admittedly an easy target). Other standouts include an elegant wood-lath sculpture by Josh Enck and a pair of dreamy Technicolor paintings by Todd Arsenault.

Through June 8 at the RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St., and the Sol Koffler Gallery, 169 Weybosset St., both in Providence. RISD Museum hours: Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Phone: 454-6500. Koffler Gallery hours: Mon.-Sat. noon-8 p.m. Admission to museum $6, $5 for 62+, $3 for college students with valid ID, $2 for ages 5-18. Museum members, RISD and Brown students and children under 5 are admitted free. Free admission for everyone Fri noon-1:30 pm, Sun 10 am-1 pm, and this Saturday. Phone: 454-6142.

Something different
Over the years, the RISD Museum has perfected the art of mounting small exhibits with lengthy, impressive-sounding titles. Fortunately, the latest in this line of bite-size shows, "Caricatura and Character: Satire in Italy and Britain in the 18th Century," has two things going for it.

One is some first-rate work from the likes of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Pier Leone Ghezzi and William Hogarth. The other is timing. One look at James Gillray's comic retelling of the life of Napoleon or Thomas Rowlandson's The Corsican Spider in His Web, in which the diminutive French leader appears as an evil-looking insect, and many viewers will feel a shock of recognition. Apparently we're not the first country to hate the French.

The show also highlights the changing nature of caricature, which began as a form of private entertainment for tourists and aristocrats but morphed into a public platform for social satire and ridicule. Today's editorial cartoonists are the most recent example of the breed.

Through June 29 at the RISD Museum. This Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., a free family program inspired by the exhibit includes drop-in workshops on basic cartooning and mask-making, video programs on animated features from Disney to Nick Park, a treasure hunt through the galleries, refreshments and a Big Nazo performance on the front lawn at 1 p.m.