Anne Chu at Christine Burgin

Anne Chu cites "medieval culture" as the inspiration for her recent show at Christine Burgin. Her interests, however, appear to have been more romantic than historical, as she devoted her energies to depicting knights and ladies, arms, armor, roses and fearsome, sharp-toothed creatures; her freewheeling artistic choices seem to depend, for the most part, on what appeals to the eye and imagination. Furthermore, Chu used a springlike range of colors--baby blue, chartreuse, pink, brown--that one hardly associates with medieval art.

The exhibition comprised a series of lithographs and three wall sculptures that were a cross between tapestries and banners. These elements all worked well together as an installation, though the show wasn't intended as such. Chu hung her series of framed prints near the gallery ceiling, like a frieze. Here, sweeping, gestural lines and painterly patches of color depicted a landscape of reclining, long-haired, bare-breasted girls, lop-eared rabbits and men in strange, poufy chapeaus. It was interesting, albeit somewhat frustrating, to have to gaze upward to see these pieces, where they were not as visible as viewers accustomed to seeing art at eye level might have liked. On high, the works came off as a unified, out-of-reach decorative motif. They thwarted scrutiny, which intensified their stateliness.

The "tapestries" also incorporated vaguely medieval elements. One featured two big, chunky bear paws, carved in wood and protruding from fabric. Chu endowed these with excellent, attenuated, spindly claws. The paws were affixed to a patch of crocheted, fuzzy yellow yarn (made like chain mail, says the artist), which was backed by a gauzy, rectangular green-gray curtain of fabric. For another such work, Chu carved the head of a fanged, monstrous beast and mounted it on a chintzy quilt with little flowers. Another banner had sweet-looking, heraldic gray creatures on it--dolphins, perhaps.

Chu's work is a guileless homage to the more intricate, allegorical tapestries that one might find, say, at Chartres. It is like an arts-and-crafts tribute to a past period, no heed for the subtle historical, religious or political nuances that might bog a historian down. Here, the result was perfectly delightful.

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group