Given that many of the capitoli
allude to sexual acts between men, particular attention needs to be paid to historical and literary accounts of same sex encounters in Bronzino's day.
Several pieces in this exhibition directly
allude to death--with images including cemeteries and the hands of a tailor making a shroud, and so on--but most do so indirectly, by giving considerable weight to the cycles of nature.
Works like the oval floral fete gallante, nymphea, 2002, or feverish embarkation, 2001,
allude to the fluttery brushwork of a Fragonard or Watteau while working it up into something far more frantic and febrile.
The gray stone walls
allude to the sacrificial pre-Hispanic god Chavin de Huantar, known for his cruelty.
Teetering in a barren landscape, all nose and seemingly aged, it bespeaks both an enduring inquisitiveness and an exhausted condition that may
allude to the conditions of making art in the East.
The balls of thread
allude to the terrestrial sphere yet, resting atop a small mattress placed on the floor, are a sign of protection and domesticity.
The canvas Separate Functions, 2001-2002, is covered in a panoply of horizontal and vertical stripes, done primarily in blues and blacks, with two small rectangular jolts of yellow that could
allude to operational lights and mass-produced packaging.
The use of cables and the title Conductor
allude to the fact that the network of underground pipes emanating from the pumping station is now used to carry fiber-optic telecommunication cables.
For emphasis, the titles of some works and the occasional pseudo-imagery that slips in
allude to the game.
Here, too, both the juxtapositions of images and the instability of the arrangement of the spheres, which can be reconfigured mentally to form endless alternate chains of meaning,
allude to those continuous shifts of physical and cognitive boundaries that are the subject of Deleuze and Guattari's text.
While the integrating motif of water continues to
allude to Bailey's overarching theme of diaspora, it also serves as a metaphor for movement and for the straggle to endure--if not for the paradoxes of assimilation.
In the exhibition this spectacularization of Clark's late practice engendered its own antidote, the creation of a sanctimonious atmosphere that was wholly contrary to her intent (it has prompted several critics to
allude to Beuys, whose cult she loathed).
