3 Metro area art exhibits are sure to challenge, satisfy

Longing for a little curatorial fizz?

Three shows across the metro area stir wit and gravity in varying proportion into cocktails well worth a sip — libations apt to appeal in equal measure to the serious and casual gallery-goer alike.

If the group photo show "Brad Iverson, Judy Linn, Vera Lutter, Bill Rauhauser & Steve Shaw" at Ferndale's Susanne Hilberry Gallery through March 10 is the most flat-out elegant, then "Love for Sale (You Know You Need It)" at the U-M Work:Detroit gallery is the bubbliest. (But act fast. The bubbles come down Friday night.)

Of the three exhibitions, the "38th Michigan Annual" competition at Mount Clemens' Anton Art Center probably does the best job balancing this blend of irreverence and beauty with a gorgeous show that still has a fair number of works that lean more disturbing than pretty. The exhibit comes down Feb. 24.

The superstar in the black-and-white Hilberry show is clearly Judy Linn, a Detroit native who shot Patti Smith in the early 1970s, producing some of the most iconic images in the rock and roll family album.

Here's Smith holding her nose, Smith hugging a pillow and Smith with a shockingly young Robert Mapplethorpe and a shockingly young Sam Shepard, the playwright who would become her lover.

Of course, given the era, we also see a lot of Smith's breasts, unclothed and up close, left as well as right.

Still, there's more to these images than shock or celebrity. "I like the directness and clarity of Judy's work," says gallery owner Susanne Hilberry. "I like their lack of sentimentality."

In a show jammed with the exceptional, don't miss Bill Rauhauser's portraits of Detroit and Detroiters from the early 1950s. Now 93 and still shooting, Rauhauser has an uncanny gift for what photo legend Alfred Eisenstaedt famously called the "defining moment." (See in particular Rauhauser's "Sander's Lunch Counter, Woodward Ave., Detroit.")

On view, as well, are Vera Lutter's other-worldly shots of Venice, Steve Shaw's hard-edged Detroit and Brad Iverson's heartbreaking essays in light and shadow from Detroit's Rouge Park.

For the "38th Michigan Annual" at Anton Art Center, juror Andrea Eis — she's the head of art and art history at Oakland University — says she picked works "that drew me back" time and again.

With that in mind, make haste to the third-place winner, "Guys Making Pies" by Rochester artist Judy Munro (pictured on the cover). Rendered in totally flat perspective in great colors, the painting stars two amusingly misshapen guys — one all jowls, the other quite handsome — in what amounts to a tongue-in-cheek tour de force.

Taking first place was an untitled painting of a woman and a dragonfly by Gail Potocki of Grand Junction — a work that achieves near perfection in its rendering of the woman's face and expression.

Marvelous and disturbing both is "Fish Out of Water" by Sterling Heights artist Samantha Luotonen, while Candice Grieve's photorealist sketch of a desert tree, "Shelter," is a total knockout.

 

Finally, anyone near Detroit's Orchestra Hall today or Friday (the show comes down Friday night) should pop into the Work:Detroit gallery for the spicy mix local artist Ryan Standfest has curated.

Check out Lauren Satlowski's "Euphoria," in which a stream of syrup pours onto a youngster's head, lacquering it in ways that resemble an identity-concealing superhero costume. But here it's the eyes that kill — lifeless, black pools completely at odds with the figure's creepy, over-rouged grin.

Happily for a show about commercial love, there's also some genuine smut at the very back of the gallery. Behind a partition and a warning sign is Jef Bourgeau's "Alex Katz is Totally Gay," a brooding, naughty cartoon in classic Bourgeau style. (Also way-cool, by the way, is the work right next to it, "My Shadow Is a Girl," a study in unhappy boyish anxiety.)

"Jef's work is spot-on," says gallery director Stephen Schudlich, "but he does like to ruffle feathers."

 

 

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