AO Onsite: Megan Marrin at Petra Projects, February 13
February 15th, 2008
Megan Marrin Exhibition via Petra Projects
Megan Marrin opened a solo show at Petra Projects last night entitled Under the Net. This show draws its inspiration from an old Appalachian tale called Two Sisters.
Megan’s Fables from V-Magazine [V-magazine]
Surreal by bits and pieces [NY Times]
In the story, one sister kills the other in a fight over a boy, one dark and one fair represent a dichotomy of good and evil - one is granted a token of the boy’s love and the other enacts her revenge. Musical necromancy emerges as a symbolic theme, as the murderous sister strings her fiddle with the hair of the dead one.
Marrin avoids overt connections to the somewhat obscure tale, but effectively creates a mood of once precious and forgotten relics. Her handpicked vintage frames, found photography from flea markets and estate sales and simply painting technique all allude to a by-gone era. Memory, as experienced through oral history and literature, are also important components to this series of work. Figures remain faceless and blurry, like faded daguerreotypes, but unlike much historical portraiture, her characters do not confront the viewer. Layers of paint and various collage technique further obscure their motives and identities. The viewer is not given clues as to the specific characters in the story or what they might be engaged in, all enhancing the feeling of mystery and foreboding. However, the works’ substance seems to rest heavily on the fable, without knowing it, these vague feelings dissipate into air, leaving behind pretty framed vignettes hanging on the wall.
Petra Projects is a traveling gallery, challenging the mode of the traditional gallery model which remains geographically rooted. The space that Petra Projects has chosen for this show is particularly suited for Marrin’s work. In an intimate room creaking with history, opening goers sipped white wine and chatted quietly with the artist and curator Anastasia Rogers. It was debated whether or not to play ’s interpretation of the song, a young talented composer/musician who views the musical work as a metaphor for folk musics violent and choppy arrangements. Marrin focuses more on the imperfect repetition found in the lyrics, that form wavering palindromic like patterns as the story progresses from beginning, middle and ending in symbolic retribution.
