Reliquaries

American Incendiary

Kevin Kegler’s exhibition of 17 assemblages at Chow Chocolat, a venue that combines fine comestibles with fine art, offers plenty of food for thought as well. With Kegler’s work there is a temptation to resist the modern inclination to regard every move an artist makes as somehow conditioned or shaped by environment, but there is in his by now familiar shrine-like diptychs a depiction of such a personal mythology of flora and fauna in delicate distress that compels participation in a fascinating guessing game not unlike viewing the dioramas of Joseph Cornell.

Kegler’s presentation borders on the medieval, both sacred and brutal at once. Beneath the stele forms of the standing woodwork, the meticulous cabinetry, and finely painted forms is a submerged narrative of mortality and memory. There is in these works a sense of nature revered but wronged by desiccation and decay. Like the Netherlands painters, he stylistically weighs in with the use of gold leaf, speaking to the sanctity of the thing painted and giviving the viewer glints of raw beauty like the edges of sunset. But there are also sere glimpses of violence, of point- blank instinct and mute passion. Kegler seems at pains to reveal in these hinged works some kind of immanent truth to the viewer. His choice of images—bees, bisected broken birds, symbolic creatures of industry and husbandry—may be viewed as shamanistic icons or like relics of the Middle Ages peripatetically toted from town to village on boards roofed to protect the display from the elements. In his use of found objects—such as a fishing reel, and a dismembered white hand—he offers a humanly balanced but no less disturbing reliquary.

The work is exhibited on the brick wall of the cafe. Large, handsomely framed, glass-fronted panels of off-white felt support paired black-and-white photos in high-contrast studies of interior light. Within, found objects such as rusted metal shards in blue and red and strips of tin are arranged in an uneasy alliance. These pieces have been hung above eye level—as such they appear to almost float away—anchored only by the visual weight of the metal relief. It is the glassed-in aspect that breaks an alchemic connection with the earlier work and renders them more in the manner of museum documents. Kegler’s iconographic mysteries resonate somewhere between the heart and mind—but there is no viscera. Like the shaman, Kegler may find answers in the guts of his memories.

—j. tim raymond