Artspace Eats With The Fishes

Yawen Zhang’s Eating in Front of Fish manages to feel like a documentary and like a bit of surrealist humor. At first glance the fish appear to be swimming in midair. And while there’s nothing weird about eating fish in front of fish — some restaurants have aquariums in them — there is also something deeply weird about eating dead specimens of animals while the live specimens of those animals are watching. What happens to the diner who stops to think about this midway through their meal?

Eating in Front of Fish is one of many pleasures in store for those who visit Artspace to see ​“Modicum,” an exhibit of the work of 10 artists — Yura Adams, Jennifer Davies, Erin Koch Smith, Jenny Krauss, Nate Lerner, Barbara Marks, David Ottenstein, Gerald Saladyga, Barbara Weissberger and Yawen Zheng — from the Orange Street gallery’s flatfile program. Curated by Sara Maria Salamone, the show runs through March 13.

Noting that ​“the term modicum denotes a ​‘small quantity of a particular thing, especially something considered desirable or valuable,’” the accompanying note goes on to explain how it relates to making and curating art. ​“Consideration, selection, knowledge, and expertise all come into play. A flat file physically contains a finite amount of flat artworks within its metal drawers. There are constrictions and limitations on space: one is required to be selective regarding what is housed inside. It is a microcosm for artworks at a specific scale — generally under 24 by 20 inches. With a keen awareness of their mediums, the artists selected to share this structure offer a measure of their greater individual practices.”

The exhibit allows viewers to take stock of that measure. Covering all of Artspace’s main gallery space, the works are given room to breathe, letting viewers take them in one at a time. The layout also serves as an invitation to explore the space — and, more subtly, to let people distance themselves from one another as they need to during the pandemic while taking in art together.

The flatfile exhibit is considerably larger than past flatfile exhibits for other reasons as well. ​“The hope is that the program is more interactive than it has been in the past,” said Lisa Dent, Artspace’s executive director. As another part of that idea, Artspace’s flatfile cabinet is itself an obvious component of the exhibit, along with a table and chairs nearby to allow people to peruse it — whether they are creators, students, or researchers.

Dent is also hopeful that having the flatfile pieces spanning the gallery will inspire the participants in Artspace’s Drop in Drawing program — open to New Haven public high school students and running Wednesday and Thursday afternoons through June. The exhibited artists’ tilt toward abstraction and formal exploration can encourage students to do likewise. It can be a kind of permission. ​“By not having to draw figurative work,” Dent said — that is, drawing a particular subject, such as a portrait or a landscape — the students can concentrate on ​“working with shadow and context” instead, developing ways to express themselves without needing to rely on figures.

They will have ample examples from the exhibit around them. The 10 artists have divergent styles, from the soft, floating shapes and colors in Jenny Krauss’s pieces to the crisp edges and geometric shapes in David Ottenstein’s photography, from the melting lines in Yura Adams’s pieces to Erin Koch Smith’s energetically scribbled sketches on lined paper. But commonalities emerge, too. Barbara Marks uses a series of shooting targets as springboards for a host of ideas.

But in the strength of her linework and her color choices, she finds kinship with the bold shapes in Gerald Saladyga’s pieces. Seeing the range of pieces of a few of the artists side by side, it’s possible to imagine that some of them are by the same artist.

There’s also room to connect Artspace’s exhibit to the activities of other galleries around town. Nate Lerner has a series of photos in both Artspace exhibit and the Ely Center of Contemporary Art. The ECOCA photos have a touch of the strange about them. The photos in Artspace, by comparison, are quite realistic, a few recognizably from the New Haven area. But — as in this untitled photo — it’s easy to see the common thread. The shapes of the plant life in the photograph are almost certainly as the photographer found them. The color takes us somewhere else.

Artspace’s Drop in Drawing program runs Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 to 5 p.m. through June 17. Students in grades 8 – 12 attending New Haven public schools are welcome to participate in a 2‑hour free drawing session in the gallery space. Materials will be provided. As only 15 students are permitted in the space at once, Artspace asks that they preregister through its website.