Worse Things Happen at Sea, Laura Gaiger
3.5 stars
Laura Gaiger’s “Worse Things Happen at Sea” is good, but not great. The exhibition has some interesting elements, and Gaiger’s use of paint is by far the best of these, however her handling of thematic elements within her paintings often falls short, feeling more as though the paintings were falling for the cliches of the genres they attempted to explore, rather than developing and growing from them.
The exhibition consists of 4 paintings, many of which have overlapping elements and all of which have disorienting perspectives and an interplay between abstract and figurative elements. Though the curatorial text says that Gaiger lives on a boat, the sensation the paintings give is that she paints on one too. At their best, the painting’s ability to capture the sway, turmoil, and hostility of the sea, redirecting it to the land, is a powerful thing. It draws the viewer in, offering them a shelter from the weather. However at their worst the paintings present only a dreamlike, Chagall vibe.
The curatorial text goes on to describe that Gaiger uses the colours of VHS tapes to give her work a more personal and homey feeling, the most obvious link to this being in the bottom left corner of “The Albatross”. Though I would never have made that connection for these paintings without it being told to me, the rippling, abstract textures across the canvas that aren’t quite wind seem at place with this reading. However I can’t say the same for the ‘VHS’ colours of the paintings, which feel at odds with this concept especially alongside the hand stitched breaks in the canvases.
In all the paintings (except ‘Chemical Shadow‘), loose, spectral figures dance and waltz through the ambiguous and weathered areas of the picture plane. Emanating from cloth, roots, plants, rain, wind, etc. The way Gaiger handles these figures is impressive, and at times the rendering begins to transcend the flatness of the painting. However the opposite is true for the more ‘real’ elements of the painting, those that are rendered as though they are undeniable facts in the world of the painting. Their moodiness and melodrama creates an effect of a kind of disgust, which in a painting like ‘Pathetic Fallacy’ works effectively, though in ‘Chemical Shadow’ and ‘Fiendish Twin’ distanced me from feelings of intimacy and relation to the subjects within.
It feels as though many elements of these paintings want to transcend the space of the canvas, the qualities that come with being painted, while many want to sink into them and embrace them. I feel that glimmers of these paintings achieve this, they start to achieve an otherworldly quality, to become something more, but these are only glimmers. And it seems ultimately Gaiger does not control when or how this happens. Many of the elements of the paintings that seem to want to transcend the paintings simply sit flat upon them, and when the paintings fail they really stop doing anything at all.
