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RYAN TRAVIS CHRISTIANRALEIGH, NCRyan Travis Christian’s Well, Here We Aren’t Again, at theContemporary Art Museum Raleigh [February 22–June17, 2013], features several excellent examples of theartist’s signature comics-style works on paper. The maindraw, however, is his installation Guess You Had to BeThere, which transforms the lower level of the buildingand gives new context to his drawings. Using newsprinttones and the graphic properties of lines, Christiancreates an experiential version of the disorienting andobfuscating world of his drawings.For the installation Guess You Had to Be There,Christian employed the planes of the room as panels ofa comic strip, using the walls and floor as platforms forhis cartoonish imagery. Wielding long strips of whitetape, Christian transformed the gray concrete floor of thegallery into a disorienting scape of diagonal stripes andchevrons. The stripes don’t merge with the floor,however; the discolorations of the concrete establishthem as a separate layer, which reinforces the op artqualities of the striped strata and gives the illusion ofunstable ground. Styrofoam blocks camouflaged toresemble the lined concrete of the building emerge atpoints where the stripes converge, like mountainsformed at tectonic points. These blocks are anthropomorphizedwith the large, lidless eyes and wide, vacuoussmiles of cartoon characters. Innocuous objects—abottle, a book, and a stone—placed on these heads reinforcetheir 3-D status but also mark them as intermediariesbetween the 2-D world of the drawings and the realspace of the gallery. The merging of 2-D with 3-Dthrough the use of distinct layers is at the heart ofChristian’s work.A 31-foot-long drawing that dominates one wall is thecrowning work of Guess You Had to Be There. Createdover the course of three weeks for this exhibition, thedrawing features a decapitated snake of ridiculouslength. Its body stretches back and forth across thework, not unlike the classic arcade game Snake, inwhich a long, thin creature travels a perimeter and picksup food while the player tries to avoid having it hit itself.The composition is multilayered: square placards bearingcartoon images and graphic shapes peer out frombehind the snake and from atop it. Diagonal lines fillthe snake, and radiating lines traverse the spacebeneath it, but a video documenting the installationreveals there is even more than meets the eye.A time-lapse video documenting the installationprocess reveals a hidden drawing of a reclining manbeneath what is visible. Christian’s decision tocompletely obscure the original image is typical for theartist. His process involves overlaying images and boldlines and erasing large areas to create thick fogs thatprovide “cloud-cover” for figures and images to hidebehind. Although he utilizes the confined space of thecomic strip panel with iconography from earlycartoons, Christian expands the spatial potential of themedium through his heavy layering techniques. Indoing so, he creates multidimensional drawings thatresemble cartoons but extend far below the surface ofthe image.By incorporating hidden elements into his drawings,Christian creates ominous worlds in which everyshadow contains a boogeyman. Take Calisthenics(2012), one of the smaller, framed drawings in thisexhibition. A cartoonish figure bends over backward.Its body is composed of wavering sets of parallel lines,which are broken by the patches of cloud shapescovering the work. As a result, the body appears like avertiginous mountain of strange topographies. Eyesappear among the clouds, like the reflection of theoriginal figure or a new, hidden person. It’s possiblethat no rational, concrete figure is intended; thoughwe may perceive this jumble of two hands, feet, andeyes is a body, we cannot prove this is true. A row ofstage lights at the top of the image reminds us that weare viewing an illusion. Christian breaks all the rules ofcartoon space and reason and, by doing so, upsetsthe basic assumptions we use when viewing images.—Lilly LampeMARIAH GARNETTSAN FRANCISCOIn Mariah Garnett’s sculptural 16 mm film installationEncounters I May Or May Not Have Had With PeterBerlin at 2nd Floor Projects [February 16-March 26,2013], a film was projected onto a disco ball hangingfrom the ceiling of the darkened interior, reflecting akaleidoscope of small images onto the gallery walls. Theimages from the film were bounced off the surface of themirrored ball, allowing illuminated glimpses, in miniature,of the filmmaker posing in various outfits as the1970s gay sex icon Peter Berlin. Each frame of the filmwas hand-painted by Garnett, creating a textural andcolorfully saturated effect. This immersive display looped100 feet of film, offering an activated and engaged viewingexperience rather than the traditional or morepassive way in which a film usually is viewed. Inspired byan interaction with Berlin, Garnett’s carefully renderedinstallation was not a conceptual disco but instead a selfreflexiverumination and recasting of identity politicsinvolving a fleeting interaction with a persona that existsexclusively in the artist’s own photographs.Encounters is a project that sheds light on the myriadways, both conscious and unconscious, in which we canmanifest our personal heroes in our own bodies,gestures, and identities. Garnett’s total project involvesmultiple components that have evolved over a period ofthree years and have been exhibited in various formats.The most recent iteration was as a three-part, singlechannel,16 mm film that was screened in San Franciscoat SFMoMA as part of the Dirty Looks series, a programoffering select film screenings from the queer cinemadiscourse. In the film version of the project, complexrelationships between domestic and public space areexplored, especially as they pertain to queer history.Filmed primarily in Berlin’s San Francisco apartment,the film’s three parts shuttle the viewer between ruminationson the public and the private: the recognizablepersonas and outfits of a gay sex icon made “public”through his photographs and delicately recapturedthrough personal interviews and conversations withGarnett. The film narrative commences with Garnett’sadoption of Berlin’s persona in a spirited way by utilizingABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Ryan Travis Christian, installation view of Well, Here We Aren't Again, 2013 [courtesy of CAM Raleigh]; Mariah Garnett, film still from Encounters I May Or May NotHave Had With Peter Berlin, 2010, 16 mm installation [courtesy of the artist and ltd los angeles]an index to contemporary culture’s imminent historyARTPAPERS.ORG 61