What do your nightmares or your pleasures look like? If scary monsters, strange faces or sci-fi alien maidens are your thing, Art*Bar has the exhibition for you. “Fear 11” is the latest rendition of their annual event where the walls are hung with work that shocks and surprises. The ghouls are let loose from the depths of the psyche.
As with any Hallows tradition, there are the standard tropes of monsters, blood and demon figures. Artist Stephen Somers revels in these, and while his subject matter may appeal to a select audience into the horror fantasy aesthetic, one can certainly say that Somers wields a paintbrush well. Natural history is cast in the reddish hue of a bloody battle between dinosaurs in T-Rex vs. Ankylosaur, and the traditions of academic painting surface in the polished, sculptural nude of Kajira with Red Tendrils.
Ryan Laessig also takes on the image of a snaky-tressed woman with Bad Hair Day Medusa, though in a form that pulls the macabre into campier corners. Gallows humor is most accentuated in Scott Hatton’s Wanting, where a cobweb-draped skeleton is all that remains of a poor dead soul who tried to slither underneath prison bars to grasp an abandoned can of Pabst beer. A surrealistic dip into anxiety is found in the assemblages of Cherish Heath. They’re all going to Laugh at You is like a peek into the mental detritus of the movie Carrie. Bulging eyes register shock from a veil of blood and the broken glitter of a rhinestone tiara.
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While most of the artists in the exhibition veer toward fantastical references in all manner of unease, Cory J. Malchow is understated and sharply real. His photographs picture horror in the forms of disembodied animal parts, picturing what actual bodily destruction means.
One of the appeals of Halloween is its pliable nature. It encompasses tangible fears, dread and disturbing scenarios, but also allows for making light of mortality with jabs that are humorous and even cute. “Fear 11” travels this dark span in all of its tricks and treats.
“Fear 11” continues through Nov. 1 at Art*Bar, 722 E. Burleigh St.
