History, Pop Culture and Beauty at Dean Jensen

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Dean Jensen Gallery

Alternate realities, layered stories, presence and memory flood the work of Claire Stigliani and Santiago Cucullu in their concurrent exhibitions at Dean Jensen Gallery.

Stigliani is personal, voyeuristic and extraordinarily complex. Paint, ink, flocking and gold leaf are used in vignettes where she pictures herself, mesmerized by specters of history, pop culture and emblems of beauty. Classical Themes continues her leitmotif of Marie Antoinette, a nod to her childhood in Austria when she lived in a home where the young princess also spent her formative years. This is combined with 21st-century Stigliani, dressed in plaid shirt, skinny jeans and sliver glitter boots. She lounges on a Louis XV armchair, drawing, while a video camera and mirrors play up the silent drama of seeing. Mirrors, cameras and projections fill her compositions but not all is benign observation. In Ghost Story, Stigliani lounges in bed, watching a murderous scene from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Engrossed, she absentmindedly draws on her exposed thigh with an X-Acto knife. Her new body of work is darker, more challenging, driving deep into a rich, concealed world of private space and secret mind.

Santiago Cucullu’s “A Softer Side of Futurism” is comparatively extroverted. The gallery walls are covered with modulating black and white, where soft gradations alternate and give way to sharp patterns. It is a dramatic setting for his luminous watercolors that similarly shift focus. They coalesce into recognizable moments, checking out the windows of homes or the structure of lonely stores. Other times he is contentedly expressive with varied clouds of color. The mood follows the practice of Futurist work by embracing multiple moments simultaneously, as though our vision is combined with the sustained memory of what has already been seen. Neighborhood Council Around Station No. 5 is one such example, where a figure pauses for a moment in a window of space opened within an orange sky. Below, a purple car catches blue light and drives by diminutive houses and buildings. Cucullu’s color palette is so lush that nothing is unnerving, but simply a blissful trip in watercolor light.

“Claire Stigliani: Screens and Mirrors” and “Santiago Cucullu: A Softer Side of Futurism” continue through March 14 at Dean Jensen Gallery, 759 N. Water St.