Artists Take A Chance On A Ghost

On Thursday evening, the storefront space at Never Ending Books was filled with shadows — not only in the images lining the walls, but from the people who came to visit the dimly lit spot, transformed into a gallery as part of the Open Source Festival organized by Artspace. The show on display was ​“Spectral Musings,” by artists from the Bridgeport-based URSA Gallery, now up at the State Street arts collective through Oct. 31. That date isn’t an accident; in time for Halloween, the art on the walls features artists investigating the darkness that lies within — and ways to move into the light.

The show is ​“inspired by the thoughts that haunt us — our demons, our shadows,” Gabe Sorrentino, who curated the show on behalf of URSA, writes in an accompanying statement. The artists — Allison H. Heckman, Alyssa Schadhauser, Cris Dam, Frank Foster Post, Looketha, and Sorrentino themselves — ​“reflect these themes through dark, moody, and even playful imagery.” The show, Sorrentino notes, finds a simpatico home in Never Ending Books, ​“a space that evokes memories of times past and encourages the viewers to reflect on mortality, morality, and the expression of one’s identity through lived experiences.”

“We approached Open Source and we said we’d like to curate a show,” said Sorrentino. ​“We asked what they were thinking of, what kind of theme they wanted, and they said, ​‘Halloween.’ We were pretty thrilled by that. I love Halloween. But also I wanted to explore pieces that are haunting but they’re not kitsch.… stuff that makes you reflect on the shadows of your mind, what haunts you on the inside.” So, appropriately, the artist Looketha has crafted a series of birds that seem pulled from woodcuts of old fairy tales, harbingers of doom.

But in Sorrentino’s estimation, the element of dread can be quite subtle. ​“Some thing that are so mundane can be horrific,” they said. They referred to Frank Foster Post’s piece, which covers a large part of the wall near the back of the storefront space. ​“It’s mundane and yet it makes you think about why this child has this expression,” they said. The feeling that something’s amiss is helped along by the message written in dark red, implied to be blood, to the left of the central canvas: ​“help me!”

Sorrentino’s own pieces in the show are all monotypes, made from a Plexiglas plate onto which they painted oil paint, then applied paper. ​“It’s a very freeing process because it just goes by so fast,” they said. ​“You can scribble whatever you want onto the plate.” Once the paper is pulled, they said, ​“there’s a ghost there,” a faint leftover of the original image. ​“I always pull the ghost because it’s cool to see the brush strokes that come out.” They cherish monotypes for the experimentation that they allow, and the accidents. ​“When it doesn’t happen the way I expect it to, I throw a miniature tantrum in my head. I walk away for about an hour.” When they return, with fresh eyes, they’re often pleased by what they see. ​“It’s a blessing the prints have to dry.”

In the pieces, Sorrentino said, ​“I was exploring my experience pre-transition — how I felt about being in the closet as a trans person. I felt like a ghost in a shell, not to pull from that title, but it’s a very hollow life, pretending to be somebody else … so I wanted to play with that.” They were mostly in the closet when they created the pieces in the first place. ​“Now I’m out,” they said, ​“so I have a different perspective on being trans now.” The closet, they said, ​“was a very dark place, and at least I think, from my experience talking to other trans people, that it’s mostly universal.” 

Now, they said, ​“I’m able to release that part of me. That’s the past. It’s behind me now. And I can look back on it and think, ​‘wow, it’s sad that I felt that way.’ But it’s also a massive relief to look at them and think, ​‘I’m so glad that I’m not there any more.’ It’s a really weird sense of pride looking at these pieces … I’ve exorcised that part of me, released it back into the ether.”

Sorrentino is still exploring psychological horror in their more recent pieces. ​“I’m working on a piece about ants eating humans, for no other reason than that it’s terrifying,” they said with a laugh. But ​“inevitably, every piece I make is about transness,” they said. Even when making art about something else, ​“parts of yourself creep into your pieces,” no matter what, they said. 

“Spectral Musings” runs at Never Ending Books, 810 State St., through Oct. 31. Visit the space’s website for hours and further information. The Open Source Festival runs through the rest of the weekend, through Oct. 30. Visit Artspace’s website for more information.