Beautiful Beast
Spanish-born Juan Perdiguero plays with beauty and the beast in Bestiario at Atlanta College of Art Gallery. Seventeen human-size canines inhabit the gallery, evoking the savage and serene nature of our favored domestic animal. Running, leaping, pausing to stare, their dark, intelligent figures cling directly to the white walls. The striking photographic-like images reconsider the notion of dog as pet. Through a mixture of traditional process and contemporary materials, the images assert that our understanding of the animal is itself a composite of reality and imagination, history and folklore, religious and secular beliefs.
The dogs are created by a collage technique that involves projections and freehand drawings on Mylar that Perdiguero overlays with photographic images of flowers. The artist cuts and shapes small squares of photosensitive paper, coloring and patterning the surface by hand with black etching ink and linseed oil that he wipes away to refine the image of each form. As a result, the canines, many of them the artist’s greyhounds, appear more real from a distance. Up close, they reveal their abstract composition as the impressions of their features fade, dissolving into rather muddy pictures of flower gardens, individual blossoms and mottled patterns in burnished crimson, brown, green and amber.
Softly lit, these dramatic figures are certain to delight and disturb. There’s a sinister side to the work that evokes the 10,000-year history of human’s rapport with dogs, a reminder that our most beloved pets were once wild and are still capable of erupting in paroxysms of violence and joy that frighten and amaze their “civilized” owners.
Perdiguero’s Bestiario reanimates the uneasy emotions we have about the beast within ourselves. The playful, yet menacing installation surprises the viewer with a powerful punch. Curator Lisa Fischman’s elucidating essay on the origins of Perdiguero’s fascination with dogs provides another insightful dimension to the show.
Bestiario continues through June 30 at Atlanta College of Art Gallery, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. Tues.-Wed. and Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thurs.-Fri. 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Sun. noon-5 p.m. 404-733-5050.??