Storytelling has been offered through a combination of visual, textual, and verbal forms throughout centuries and cultures. Bending the Word in the MATRIX gallery at the UC Berkeley Art Museum brings four young artists together to look at the use of narrative in current visual art practice.

Patricia Esquivias, Folklore II, 2008 (still)

Patricia Esquivias' two video projects, Folklore I (2006) and Folklore II (2008), combine 20th century reporting techniques to create a surprisingly engaging and contemporary take on oral history. In Folklore I, the handheld camera shifts back and forth over Esquivias' handwritten journal and cut out photographs while the artist tells the story in her own, unscripted words. This technique, at once endearing and fascinating, seems straight out of secondary school but is saved by the complexity of its subject matter: the comparison of a gentlemen's bet to Franco's dictatorship and a 48-hour dance party to the establishment of a monarchy in Spain. While a tripod is used in Folklore II, helping provide a steady view of the Powerpoint slides on her Powerbook G4 laptop, Esquivias quickly abandons the computer for her previous use of photographs and notes. We are led willingly through her story correlating the reign of Philip II to that of Julio Iglesias, never once wishing for a more polished and professional presentation.

Martha Colburn, Myth Labs, 2008 (still)

In Martha Colburn's film Myth Labs (2008) history and current events are rolled into one beautifully collaged visual experience. Her animation weaves the history of the United States to contemporary concerns such as drug use and poverty in one fluid fantasy. In the first five minutes, for instance, pilgrims arrive on land and are met by Native Americans who defend themselves then move on to showing the newcomers the ingredients for crystal meth. There is the usual cast of characters any good Christian-based story can't do without: the white woman/madonna, white man/savior, followers/disciples, and people of color/needy. The film may have seemed particularly timely because of the day I viewed the exhibition (shortly after Thanksgiving and less than a month since the Governor of Alaska was on the GOP ticket), but it is hard to imagine viewers not being intoxicated by the work many years from now.

Olivia Plender, A Stellar Key to the Summerland, 2007 (detail)

Olivia Plender's and Tris Vonna-Mitchell's works are both installation-based. Plender's A Stellar Key to the Summerland (2008) presents the artist's own research and fabrications, primarily relating to the work of Katy and Maggie Fox. The sisters created the Modern Spiritualist Movement as a ruse and found themselves hosting a variety of believers in their home in upstate New York. The most compelling portions of Plender's work are the comic book panels, one set bound as a book, the other mounted and elaborately framed for more traditional viewing. The subversive nature of their undertaking shines through in this format and seems to mirror the siblings' own delight in their creation. Vonna-Mitchell's Seizure: hahn/huhn (2004-08) installation is the least well served in the MATRIX gallery. It includes remnants of the artist's live performance hahn/huhn, a work that has evolved since 2004. The exhibition brochure emphasizes how the performances "capitalize on the energy of a live situation." Here, however, the ideas are lost in translation. Grainy black and white images spew from two slide projectors, and three photographs printed at a slightly larger size are mounted directly on the opposite wall. The noise from the projectors makes it nearly impossible to hear the audio from the two speakers mounted on a shelf nearby. The components seem to long for the artist/griot to be present in order to guide us.

Bending the Word will be on view at the Berkeley Art Museum through February 8th, 2009.