Enduring and Fading with Sara Greenberger Rafferty
The three artworks Sara Greenberger Rafferty has on view in Love & Theft at White Flag Projects all prominently feature 1970’s-era comedians (Valerie Harper, Vicki Lawrence, and Joyce Dewitt). While these works could be considered portraits, their goals are a far cry from what is traditionally expected of the genre.
The stand-up comedian is more than a random fixation for Greenberger Rafferty; rather, the aesthetics of stand-up comedy act as a metaphor for her artistic practice. Like the comic, her work stands alone; it’s not overly ornate or overwhelmingly large, and it’s accessible and human in scale while attempting to be engaging. Greenberger Rafferty’s process and choice of materials also complement the vulnerable stand-alone humanity of her works. She scans, prints, splashes, and rephotographs each image, lending the slick C-prints mounted to Plexiglas a somewhat abused, and discarded quality.
Like most appropriation art, what is interesting about these altered images is not only the present artwork but also the necessary reconsideration of the original object, and the effect Greenberger Raffterty’s strategy has had on it. The fluid stains on a Vicki Lawrence photograph that originally appeared on the 1972 album cover for The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, make Lawrence look like a demonic teenage boy. In contrast, Valerie Harper turns both gory and rain-soaked, longingly gazing to the right as if searching, and Joyce Dewitt transforms into a spectral, skeletal floating head.
Greenberger Rafferty’s pieces confer a range of emotional suggestion – from sadness to isolation, failure to obscurity. Juxtaposing these apparent sentiments against the backdrop of comedy strikes an oppositional note that allows the images to capture both the viewer’s visual and emotional attention. Greenberger Rafferty’s work in Love & Theft brings faded celebrities back into view and allows us to witness their slow dissolve.
Love & Theft will remain on view at White Flag Projects until Saturday, February 13. For more details on the exhibition and other events at White Flag Projects, visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.
-Lynna Borden, Intern
