Dan's Papers - August 1, 2008 - Seeking the Surreal At SCOPEHamptons

Believe it or not, art fairs are a lot like film festivals: an abundance of things to see and experience; an overload of visual material bombarding the senses; the participation in a special world showing off what's new and different, good and bad.

Even so, sometimes there's no escape.

Luckily, that wasn't the case at this year's ScopeHamptons. The spatial arrangement of the exhibits gave viewers room to breathe and appreciate the work, which is a good sign as far as the dynamics of aesthetics are concerned. And spectators didn't feel the pervading congestion that people experience from the East End traffic.

In a nutshell, ScopeHamptons, at least for this critic, was an enjoyable event, made more interesting when the focus became to specifically seek out surreal, ambiguous art works.

First stop was East Hampton's Salomon Contemporary Gallery where Darius Yektai's "Untitled Landscape" and "Untitled Reflection" presented striking settings of both mysterious and mythic themes, the abstraction lending itself to dysfunction and imbalance. Such an ambience is one we have come to expect from Yektai, manifesting itself in diverse media. Is his cosmic vision one of the past or the future? Or perhaps the present?

Another local artist, Andrea Cote (represented by Dallas' Pan American Art Projects) provided a surreal perspective of the female figure with arresting etchings and aquatints. While Cote's figures get lost in the web of her spider-like lines, we're not sure if her subjects are eternally entrapped or liberated as a result.

Vee Speers' photographic series at Boston's RHYS Gallery is a third example of ambiguity and Surrealism. Although many other photographers (like Tina Barney and Christa Maiwald), use their own children as subjects, there's something unsettling about Speers' work. The children seem innocent enough, often dressed up in vintage clothes from the 1950s and '60s, but there's the subtle idea that their identity has already been defined even at an early age.

Zeng Jianyong's ink and watercolor portraits of children at New York's Eli Klein Fine Art Gallery also address what is not seen but sensed instead. The artist's youngsters are wide-eyed, thoughtful and a bit sad, as if they are expecting disaster at any minute. Yet according to their uniforms, they are "head of the class," and should be looking forward to a bright future. Again, like Speers' photographs, there's a sense of finality about these children's lives.