New Haven Independent

The myriad ways our fine species might be killing itself along with the other creatures of the planet went on display in Forces of Nature, a linked series of nine acrylic paintings by Bill Saunders at Hulls Fine Framing on Whitney Avenue.

Saunders’s is the co-creator of Ideat Village and a moving force in the city’s “outsider” art scene. In this exhibition of his paintings, the first in eight years, he also declares himself as the city’s reigning catastrophist par excellance, and he does it in French no less.

One of the many funny conceits in the show: The name of the artists is presented as Volonte’ Morceau. If you decode this name using your high schoolfFrancais, you will see that “volonte” means “will,” which easily becomes William. And “morceau” are pieces or morsels. Morsels indicate things are “asunder,” which is anagrammatically close enough to Bill Saunders, said Bill Saunders.

Such multilingual punning has a serious side, as any true catastrophist knows. For the breakdown of language, that most social and universal human institution, could well be a sign of societal disster. Ooops, I mean disaster.

Hey, there’s comedy in total annihilation and slow unwanted mutations, and this exhibition finds lots of it. With all its enviro-doomed and thermonuclear sheen, Forces of Nature can be seen at Hull’s Fine Arts Gallery on Whitney just above Grove until, yes, Christmas Eve.

A reception celebrating the exhibition’s new lease on life drew several dozen people Thursday night. It was anything but a disaster.

In each painting, such as “Eau Revoir,” loosely translated as “Goodbye, Water,” Saunders features one of the many side show freaks from the famous eponymous Tod Browning film of 1932; in this case Sealo, for seal-armed Stanley Berent, a kind of thalidomide-damaged man avant la lettre.

He’s defending against a monster and being helped in same by a nautilus, a creature evolutionarily unchanged for gazillions of years. In the middle is a vortex, which depending on your point of view is a garbage disposal or another of the myriad ways by which we will disappear.

The wonder of all this is that the freaks are energized and joyous, like Saunders himself. For a fuller decoding of Saunders and the show, click here for Hank Hoffman’s profile in this week’s Advocate.

In addition to the paintings, the show features dozens of masks to enable you to become a freak for the instant.There are also links on Facebook, where by looking up Wang Unicornus, Frances O’Connor, or Simon Metz, you can meet and friend the entire freak family.

In January, the exhibition moves to the Aucocisco Gallery in Portland, Maine, should the planet survive until then.