Art exposes the mechanics of exposure

By Dean Poling

June 01, 2008 09:33 pm

— VALDOSTA — Have you ever had something in your life that seemed like magic until someone pointed out just how it worked?
Sometimes that revelation is a good thing. Think Dorothy discovering the all-powerful Wizard of Oz is really a little man working gizmos behind a curtain. Sometimes that revelation is a bad thing. Think of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment gone awry.
Coral Springs, Fla., artist Al Razza’s “Gearilla” series, which is scheduled to be the central theme of his exhibit opening this evening at the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts, is a fun and fascinating look at how too often we demand to know how things work instead of appreciating things for what they are.
“Gearilla Works is a humorous, but enigmatic reference to a body of work that uses gears as the main design element,” Razza says in an artistic statement. “They were inspired by the contemporary notion that ‘a machine’ is behind all that is, that a device or mechanism is turning our world, be it mythical, magical, or simply implied. They are the unmasking of that suggested device.”
Razza’s Gearilla work has a sense of Old World excitement behind it. Something akin to seeing a da Vinci drawing with the gears and cogs powering a Renaissance-era helicopter or some other machine. There is a flat-world quality to Razza’s “Gearilla” ideas, a premise of the deus ex machine — the theatrical “god machine.”
But Razza also wants to stimulate thought on our modern ambition of discovering what makes everything tick.
“They are part of the abomination as well,” Razza says. “Like King Kong or Frankenstein, they remind us that man’s spirit is corrupted by an ever curious need to discover something at any expense, to make a monster out of something pure, to exaggerate the common place, to go beyond the surface, dig into the subconscious realm and find the apparatus that lies in the dark recesses of our mind, at the edge of our dreams, and at the edge of night.”
Razza is a 1991 recipient of a South Florida Consortium Fellowship, awarded for artistic excellence by the South Florida Art Consortium and the National Endowment for the Arts; which included a $15,000 stipend, according to his Web site bio. “His work has been exhibited in museums, and galleries, and is included in many private and public collections. He has taught in the Broward County, Florida School System, and was an instructor at the Coral Springs Museum of Art for 10 years. He is also the owner of Design Crafters Gallery and School of Art Inc., located in Coral Springs.”
Now, Razza joins three other new shows opening tonight in the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts.


• GALLERY
Artist Al Razza’s exhibit opens in the Price-Campbell Foundation Gallery, along with artist Donald Kollberg, Josette’s Gallery; the Best of Spring Into Art, Sallie and Harmon Boyette Gallery; Moody Air Force Base art, Roberta George Children’s Gallery.
Where: Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts, 527 N. Patterson St.
Opening reception: A free, public reception, 5-7 p.m. today.
Show run: The shows run from this evening to Aug. 6.
Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; closed Sundays and Mondays with exception of opening reception evenings.
Admission: Free.
More information: Call 247-2787.

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