Ovubet:
26 Girls with Sweet Centers
drypoint etchings by Peregrine Honig
Augen Gallery 817 SW 2nd Ave., 224-8182.
Closes Oct. 30
Peregrine Honig's show at Augen crawls right under the skin,
plumbing the dark side of sexuality. Honig's suite of drypoint
etchings are as disarmingly pretty as a young girl and as
perverse an ode to innocence tweaked as Nabokov's Lolita.
The artist's statement and exhibition title intimate pedophilia
and the erotic power of prepubescent girls, but nothing prepares
you for the sly sophistication of what ensues. The works in
the exhibition are mounted on the wall in the progression
of a Victorian primer, building an alphabetical narrative
from successive "pages." The opening page depicts a plate
of cloying sweets with a girl's name written on each. Then,
beginning with "A," each page has one of these names in a
line or two of sing-song rhyme. The images themselves are
printed onto oval-shaped paper doilies and sweetly framed.
The paper doilies suggest a trickle-down Victorian sensibility.
This cheap-looking paper version of gentility aptly frames
each story. The girls depicted wear the same kind of childhood
panties and undershirt but exude a paradoxical knowledge of
sexuality.
As the alphabet progresses, a creeping sense of unease
builds. When you arrive at "E," you read that "E is for
Emma secretly taped." The bottom torso of a little girl
beginning to pull down her underwear is shown on a television
monitor. Next, "F is for Fiona drunkenly raped." The timing
is deadly. By the end, when you reach "Z is for Zoe conceived
Christmas Day," you've run the gauntlet. In this last entry,
Honig plays on the alphabet book form to finish with a devastating
double play on the word "conceived." Was she conceived or
did she conceive? Under one foot is a toy bunny with a cross
at the eye to indicate that it's dead. Zoe's childish belly
shows that she's pregnant.
Humbert Humbert and his ilk slouch around just beyond the
girls' frilly containments. The adults' invisible presence
compresses the psychological space inside the doily frames.
This presence grows more insistent as you move from etching
to etching. Each letter stands for a different girl, but
they're individuals and everygirl simultaneously.
The overall color scheme projects a "My Little Pony" girliness
that enhances the gruesome stories. Honig's restrained use
of color increases the impact of the images: She dots the
scenes with tell-tale spots of red, pointing to places of
power, vulnerability or harm. Nipples might be two red dots--in
the case of Fiona, a sign of her victimization. All the
girls in Ovubet are indeed the victims of predators.
But some have a dangerous and powerful aspect of their own,
born of their experience. Without these glimpses of strength,
I suspect the work would fail.
Honig has also nailed perfectly the style of drawing found
in turn-of-the-century children's books. After I saw her
work, I was in a book store and came across a children's
book from 1909. After seeing Ovubet, the innocuousness
of the drawing style seemed slightly perverse. I had to
put the book back on the shelf.
Honig's work insuates itself into your psyche like a grain
of sand in the eye, agitating until you have to deal with
it. The work raises questions about all the baby-doll sexuality
prevalent in consumer culture. She points out how the line
of transgression is truly filament-thin. Ovubet is
a pithy, uncomfortable and thoughtful reminder of the darkest
impulses of our society.
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Willamette Week | originally
published October 20,
1999
|
