Amazing Art Again At Craven Contemporary

You don’t expect to see an astronaut in Lakeville, yet he captures your eye the moment you walk in to “Process,” the show that just opened at Craven Contemporary, Andrew Craven’s small gallery of continual photographic surprises. The astronaut, you see, is actually the main actor in a high definition single-channel video made by Brian Bress, the astronaut himself, and the show is about how he and four other artists make their work.

Los Angeles-based Bress often dons costumes and hides behind masks to make his surreal, collaged and painted video series, each produced in small numbers — “Astronaut (on yellow construction)” at Craven was made as an edition of one and one artist’s proof. Against a pale yellow painted background, the masked artist peers out of an opening in the faux space helmet and paints directly on a glass panel in front of him. Naive, childish drawings are made — remember, he is actually drawing the images from behind, backwards — and animals or fruits or vegetables appear, only to be erased for Bress to make a new drawing. 

“Astronaut” runs on a continuous, 24-minute loop in which Bress completes, then erases, five different drawings. He works slowly, methodically, hypnotically. If you have time, you will want to view the entire loop.

The most colorful picture comes from Daniel Gordon, a Brooklyn-based artist who studied at Bard and Yale. His work is a combination of photography and collage: He cuts out images from books and magazines, photographs each, then places them on a table for the final photograph. In “Pineapple and Leaf Shadow #12,” the central pineapple was photographed, then new spiky leaves were cut out of dull green paper and collaged onto the pineapple photo, which was photographed again. Cut out fruits lie around the pineapple, palm-like paper fronds on the right cast their shadows on the prepared background. It is obviously heavily influenced by Henri Matisse, and it is delightful.

The oddest work is “Pixie Stix 3 (from Taste Tests in Color)” by another L.A.-based artist, Matthew Brandt, whose work always involves water — he famously adds water from whatever he has photographed to his developing tray (he uses an old-fashioned camera technique, photographing from under fabric that shuts out light). The results are unpredictable and fascinating. In “Pixie Stix 3,” however, he has taken a photo of the Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park and made a multi-layered silkscreen print using the candy to overlay the original image. The result has an almost pointillist aspect.

John Houck, also from L.A., decided to create a “Family Crest” based on his parents’ occupations: His father was a carpenter, his mother a housekeeper. A plaster of Paris white hand holds a plaster hammer next to a plastic spray-bottle of cleaning solution with a yellow nozzle and handle that look much like the head and beak of a toucan. All three are photographed together on a white surface in a gray-and-white angled corner.

Finally there is Matt Lipps’ “Untitled (Sink)” from his Home Series. Lipps, another Californian, follows his own strict guidelines: Images are cut out of books or publications, or photographed directly — here he has snapped his mother’s kitchen — then placed on a shelf behind an amorphous, sculptural object or figure he has created, then the whole photographed. At Craven, Lipps’ image is a C-print on aluminum, so the whole has a sheen and a solidity.

“Process” runs at Craven Contemporary through Oct. 7. The gallery is a 340 Main St. in Lakeville, Conn., and is open weekends. E-mail cravencontemporary@gmail.com for information.