Elizabeth Zvonar
On Time

Sometimes the most intriguing things are the most difficult to ­categorize. Elizabeth Zvonar’s recent exhibition is a veritable mash up of references — common hand gestures, 1960s counterculture, alternate space-time dimensions, early twentieth-century art movements — thwarting efforts to draw a single line of interpretation through the work. Instead it is best to start in the middle.

Two diagonal walls intersect the main gallery. One sits only waist-high, and leans precariously toward the floor. Walk around to the other side to find the wall held up by a dozen mannequin arms (Legs, 2009). Above hangs a found book cover (Concentration, 2009), the word “focus” embossed in a 1960s typeface on its surface, as if an absurd imperative given the height at which it is hung. Parallel to this an oversized fist carved in yellow cedar juts out from the wall (The Ages, 2008), the thumb raised in a gesture of approval or a slag. Yet either sign is complicated by an oversized rubber band draped over the thumb, falling flaccidly into a heap on the floor, suggesting that a game of flinging small objects has just come to an end. On the facing wall is a blown-up collage showing two young women reading a book, their long brown hair hanging down over faces replaced by radiant beams of light, as if the text’s cosmic energy is being channeled from the pages directly into their brains (Channeling, 2009). Between them on a pedestal is a provisional stack of mirrored and transparent glass cubes, a purported window into the fourth dimension (Object of Contemplation, 2009). This peculiar dynamic between “picture” and “object” continues; the uncanny juxtapositions within the images mimicking the sculptural method, and vice versa.