FindArtNola

One of the reliable destinations of the St. Claude district’s Second Saturdays, the galleries which open their doors and regale art enthusiasts and Bywater hipsters with free booze and a sampling of national and local artists, is The Good Children Gallery. Its latest showing is a series of video installations, six artists whose works are shown on monitors, projected on walls, and seen through a hole in a cardboard box. Through a curtain at the rear of the gallery (offering an echoing tingle of a video store’s backroom beaded curtain) is Kate Gilmore’s Between A Hard Place. Gilmore (kategilmore.com) is a New York based artist whose video installations feature herself dressed in feminine attire taking on physically assaulting and repetitious tasks such as lifting a series of mortar cubes onto high shelves, attempting to scale a hazardous, chocolate syrup covered ramp on roller skates, and climbing a most unscrupulous ladder comprised of chairs, bookshelves, tables, any object that might be found in a thirty-something artist’s apartment. Between A Hard Place jams itself well within Gilmore’s oeuvre, and between the sheetrock walls of a New Orleans gallery whose visitors are familiar with the sensory sensations of urban con- and de-struction. It begins (and it does have a beginning, there is a narrative at work) with a gray wall, tightly framed. The frame will not move. As Gilmore steps into frame we can just see her hands slipping on a pair of long back gloves, the sort worn with a tea gown to a party. There is the back of her ankles and thighs in sheer stockings, the hem of her brown dress, bright, egg yolk yellow shoes with pump heels, and the gray wall she now attacks, punches and kicks at, soon – and not without effort, it is no prop wall – breaking through. It is strangely compelling to watch someone attack a wall with fists and feet, a sense of suspense to accompany the cacophony as Gilmore breaks through the first wall to be immediately confronted by another exactly like it. We glimpse that the inside of the sheetrock walls are painted the same bright, egg yolk yellow as her shoes. Without pause she attacks the second wall, and after battling her way through, attacks a third. We have never seen her face, only her back, the throw of her fists and shoulders, the kicking of her legs and feet. She does not tire, she assaults her way though each wall to take on the next, and at each we wonder how many there are. How many layers will she enter? Will she tire, be hurt, be ultimately defeated by these Kafka-esque thresholds she crosses one after another, each perfectly mirroring the last? As viewers (as opposed to visitors looking at a painting or sculpture, it’s not a single frame we admire, but 30 frames per second), we are wrapped up in its plot, and compelled to seek out metaphors. Walls serve as a metaphor of power; walls are built by humanity, for humanity. They contain us, shelter us inside, keep others out. But when an individual is able to punch through a wall, there is a shift in power, until the appearance of another wall shifts that power yet again. Gilmore, perpetually entering, victoriously crosses every boundary only to find another boundary, another physical and psychic barrier, awaiting. Dressed for a cocktail party, wearing the attire of a preconceived role, she defies that role most uncivilly by becoming a demolition machine. Or has she not betrayed the role but only redefined it? Is her power contained within one who can don stocking and dress and cross thresholds most often left to those dressed in overalls and hardhats? As we watch Gilmore take on four walls we are compelled to wonder, need to speculate. She penetrates the center of the frame, grows more distant from us; as she travels in we can see more of her, more of her body, anyway – her face, the expressions we rely on inter-personally, are unavailable. Her back is to us, we cannot read her strain or emotions or needs; we witness only her force. Ultimately it will end, Gilmore will reach a center, or the representation of a center: a wall painted that same bright, egg yolk yellow, which she will not attack or attempt to enter. Instead she turns to the camera, fade to black. The arc of the narrative has been fulfilled, we can move on to the next installation, or return to our own sheltering walls with a vague, unsettled notion of something accomplished.