ART NEW ENGLAND
1996 August/September

by Susan Maluski

Randall Beck Gallery / Boston
Ilana Manolson: The Unstill Life

Usually inanimate objects ascend, soar, rotate, and gyrate in Ilana Manolson's The Unstill Life, this accomplished artists fifth one-person show at the Randall Beck Gallery. In this likable exhibition, Manolson uses ordinary kitchen objects to show the motion and emotion of everyday life. The artist explains, "I try to capture the fragile balance of competing demands, as stacked plates or bowls strain to avoid falling." This kinetic crockery, with its connotation of home and hearth, captures the imbalance, upheaval, and strain of the domestic realm.

There is a definite feeling of weightlessness and things spinning out of control in many of the thirteen monoprints: the contents of cups spatter up and out, bowls oscillate as if they are about to blast off. In Motion/Emotion, green bowls and cups teeter precariously on the edge of a table and an elongated spoon almost becomes a projectile hurtling upward. Oddly enough, the unsettled feeling brings to mind Cezanne's still lifes in their distorted angles and highly manipulated perspective.

In Coffee Cup Dreams four stacked bowls appear to have been dropped, their fall caught just before impact. A sense of arrested movement is heightened not only by the energetic composition but also by the active brushstroke, splotches, and sprays of vibrant color. Amid the upheaval, a small red cherrylike form appears to be the only static object in the composition, stable reference point in the flux of dishes.

Hues used throughout the show - marigold yellow, saffron, red-orange, chartreuse, parrot green, Caribbean blue--are radiant thanks to the artist's inspired juxtapositions. In Tea and Tango, an image with two blue-green bowls on a turquoise table, one small orange orb bal-ances the group; in Kitchen Flight swirls of yellow-green shoot out in spirals with energy of a tornado unleashed from inside the cupboard.

The show includes several more subdued restful works. Ghost of Tea Times Past could take place underwater, the murky blue-green palette accented by white air bubbles. In Forged Path, deep blues, greens, and purples form two cups in a bowl rocking and swaying in the frothy waves. Only the glimpse of a table edge, a small bright orange zip, brings us back to terra firma.

Dirty Dishes, the only oil painting exhibited, depicts several thick weighty jars crammed into a heavy, round, shallow bowl. Compared with the hyperactive locomotion of the cups and saucers, the jars look in dire need of liberation. Perhaps these tightly capped jars could also benefit from letting off a little steam of their own.

The Boston Globe
April 25, 1996

By Cate McQuaid
Globe Correspondent

Dancing Dishes; rocking horse winners; affable animals

"Unstill Life," Ilana Manolson's show of monoprints at the Randall Beck Gallery, could alternately be titled "The Secret Life of Bowls." These prints, swirling with light and breathtaking color, take the domestic subject of many still lifes and set it spinning. The artist suggests in her statement that her works address the chaos of real life that belies the fragile order of a well-stocked china cabinet, but the sheer beauty of her images brings them head and shoulders above any frank discussion of disorder in the realm of magic.

Manolson equates motion with emotion, and her prints rush and bubble breathlessly with swift brush strokes. "Tea and Tango" takes place on a rich turquoise ground suffused with light. A dusky, periwinkle bowl rimmed with the white of the exposed paper sits near the bottom of the frame, and a golden, bubbly fire rushes out of it, both pushing and cradling a second bowl. The fire curves around the second bowl and back into it, where it cushions a mug that spins away from the bowls as a sparkling explosion of white spills from its mouth.

With tea cups flying and bowls spinning, the first thing to come to mind when looking at these prints may not be a Japanese tea ceremony, but Manolson invests her subject matter with the same kind of respect and energy that goes into just such a Buddhist ritual. There is new life and understanding in event moment, and in the most mundane of objects. Even dishes will dance and spark you let them, and this artist has.