Baird Show Looks at Body as Medium and Message

On the first afternoon of spring, a group of artists looked to the body. "Corporeal Connection," the new show at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange's Baird Center, is a three-artist look study subtitled "Transformation of the Figure as Springboard for Larger Issues." The show opened on Sunday with an artist's talk and a reception.

The show, which runs from March 21 until April 18, features the work of Kristen Woodward, Maplewood's Bryan Christie and South Orange resident Walter Zimmerman. Each of the artists used the image of the body—not necessarily human—as a way to make a broader statement about the world. 

Woodward's work is mixed media on paper and clay monoprint. In an Artist's Statement, Woodward explains that "almost twenty years ago I began researching Biblical women in hopes of better understanding the relationship between gender and the Judeo-Christian tradition. This investigation evolved into several bodies of work addressing such diverse issues of reproduction, transformation, temptation and greed." Woodward describes these issues as the "conceptual underpinnings" for the mixed media works on display. Her clay monoprints are from a series entitled "Dominion," which refers to "man's relationship with his 'true nature' in the physical and spiritual sense."

Christie describes his digital prints and video projection as "a meditative exploration of the body." He is strongly influenced by Michelangelo. "I feel we've entered a new time of art meeting science that's comparable to the Renaissance," he explains. "We have these amazing new tools to create visualizations, and we can view the body in unexpected ways." He notes that Michelangelo studied bodies by visiting morgues and undertaking dissections. "Similarly," explains Christie, "we can use new technologies to peer into the body, creating ways to see it afresh."

Zimmerman relies on blown glass, industrial materials, including plumbers' fittings, and plastic, wire and shellac for his sculptural work. "One of the only things I remember from high school physics is the concept of vectors," explains Zimmerman. "Unlike the other abstruse theorems and formulae we were expected to absorb, this one mathematical observation had immediate relevance to life as I understood it then."

Vectors continue to influence Zimmerman, whose work "continues to express the underlying issues expressed by the phenomena... those involving intention, directions, and conflict, to say nothing of shame, desire, ambition or a million other motivating energies." Zimmerman's non-traditional choices of material are deliberate. "I choose inorganic materials—blown glass, plumbing pipe, hardware fittings, wire mesh and plastic—because they seem more eloquent in expressing the poignant vulnerability of flesh suspended in time and space."

As the afternoon's reception concluded, artists and viewers left the Pierro Gallery, walking out into the spring sunshine perhaps with Zimmerman's vision in mind. "Even when a piece is finished," he explains, "I know that it is still going to continue spinning around in space... gathering age and bewildered glances, shedding and gaining meaning, spinning slowly in place, just like all of us."