Author: Merrily Kerr

For ‘Time Out’ Magazine

Imagine the buildings in midtown Manhattan fused together into one self-sufficient mega-structure and you’ve got the idea behind Jonah Freeman’s 55-minute-long film The Franklin Abraham (2004). It tells the story of a fictional structure-post-“zoning emancipation”-with its own industry, commerce, government and population of around 2 million.

Although such a structure is fascinating to contemplate, the glimpses of life inside the “Frankie” that Freeman provides are underdeveloped, if attention-grabbing. We’re introduced to characters like Isaac, the forelock- and yarmulke-wearing leader of the Sons of Abraham gang; but before we can learn much about him and his buddies, attention shifts to an edible prostitute (pecan flavor) and sundry, unrelated events-the building owners’ explosive family conference and the interactions of unhappy couples.

In the past, Freeman’s photographs have focused on the influence of architecture on human psychology, and The Franklin Abraham expands this investigation to an epic scale. The building Freeman depicts is consistently dreary and weirdly empty, despite its reportedly huge population. This helps explain the miserable attitudes of the residents, but we don’t need an hour of footage to understand that this utopia isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

If more effort went into developing characters’ experiences of their unique environment and less into references to technological advances and off-screen events (such as the rioting reported in a TV news broadcast), perhaps the film might have been more satisfying. It’s a promising beginning, but if Freeman hopes to engross us in his alternative universe, we’ll need to see a sequel.

For ‘Art on Paper’ magazine

Yun-Fei Ji is on a mission. In the past year, this Brooklyn-based painter has presented two major solo painting shows in New York that fiercely condemn the newly built Three Gorges Dam in China’s Hubei province. Last spring, Ji’s lively depictions of village life expressed equal parts affection for country life and disgust at the corruption and ignorance that threatened to make that life extinct. Now that the cities and villages along the dammed Yangzi River have been dismantled, millions of people have been relocated and the waters have risen, the mood of the new paintings is mournful. Scavengers, stragglers, and eerie skeletal figures go about their business in literal ghost towns.

Although the series is collectively titled ‘The Empty City,’ the best paintings are ironically those with the most people. ‘Bon Voyage’ (2003), the busiest, juxtaposes frantic villagers leaving their old life in the midst of swirling waters with partying tourists onboard a cruise ship on the newly widened river. In ‘East Wind’ (2003), an equally riotous scene, Red Guards make their way down a rocky, refuse strewn valley wall amongst shirtless village men who look too weak and helpless to object.

Because Ji’s sometimes bizarre animal and human characters are the most intriguing parts of his paintings, some of the less populated scenes run the risk of simply repeating his iconographic repertoire of ghostly figures moving amongst piles of building supplies and equipment. This is especially true of ‘Autumn’ (2003), in which the fall foliage is beautiful, but none of Ji’s skilled caricatures appear.

Nevertheless, by selecting the rock formations and flora of the countryside as the setting for his paintings, instead of the cities where the upheaval is more pronounced, Ji wisely chooses an intimate means to portray the destruction of a lifestyle in place for centuries. He zeros in on the frail bodies and wizened faces of a population familiar with hardship but who will now endure much worse. Haunted by the ghosts of the country’s past and unable to foresee the future in this area, Ji and others look on, helpless to stop the heartbreaking march of ‘progress.’

For ‘Time Out’ magazine

The women in Hilary Harkness’s paintings have never seemed like the sort that populate nurturing, feminist communes. But those depicted in the three new works that make up her second New York show are even less inviting. Now her slender and scantily clad stock characters inhabit exploitative class systems on a battleship and a whaling ship, and indulge their animal passions in an art-filled Alpine chalet.

Violence and fear appear to be the factors that keep workers striving toward a collective goal in each dystopian scene. In Crossing the Equator (2003), scores of wounded crowd a battleship’s lifeboats. Details-a guillotine on deck, a bugle player who’s being executed by hanging-suggest that traitors are being flushed from the ship as it is evacuated. Heavy Cruisers (2004) is also set on a ship; the double entendre of the title alludes to both the vessel and the pregnant women onboard. In a lounge area, women view fetuses in jars, while next door, others occupy double-tiered stalls to give birth.

Harkness’s paintings seem determined to challenge stereotypes of women as peace-loving; coincidentally they’re on view at a time when the prison scandal in Iraq reminds us that female soldiers are as capable of abuse as men. Harkness takes this point to an extreme in Matterhorn (2003-4), in which debauched Fräuleins torture, fight and pleasure each other in a sadistic orgy of excess. Harkness may want to imply that sexual or social transgression is the ultimate expression of individuality. Instead, with their clone-like appearance, her women suggest an undifferentiated unit. Harkness’s paintings are a chilling vision of free will yoked in service to a higher power.