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Eric La Gattuta: Shuhkawgo

January 9 - February 7, 2004

gescheidle
300 W. Superior St.
Chicago IL 60610
312-654-0600
Tues-Sat, 11a-6p
http://www.gescheidle.com

From its very inception in the postwar world of the 1950s science fiction has been a popular genre, the future and its fantastic inhabitants and technologies exerting a powerful lure on the American psyche. Most of it was pulp: bug-eyed monsters and beautiful gals; Flash Gordon and Mars Needs Women. But a few authors trafficked in more then mere alien adventure. Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and others found in the medium a fertile ground for real storytelling, human nature and politics.

In a similar vein, Erik La Gattuta's Shuhkawgo shows us human potential and human failings in a science fiction setting. These works at Gescheidle Gallery through February 7, 2004, use a popular idiom to reflect contemporary fears. La Gattuta bridges that line between popular art, and that which draws one in and incites conversation and reflection. And in the progression of his narrative, he shows us contemporary fears: a blend of age-old human nature, contemporary concerns, and futuristic wonder. In his illustrative choices and selection of scenes, La Gattuta provides just enough to let the viewer fill in the details: imaginative renderings of a beliveable future, a balance between the familiar, and the strange -- as in the setting of Autumn Plowing (oil on canvas: 30 x 60 in.: 2003) with its retro-futuristic greenhouses rising at the corner of "Lincoln & Armitage". In each contrast between the elegant Beozhnee and the earthy, hairy Shuhkawgoans, we see believable human characteristics. The artist employs science-fiction conventions, as in the colorful skin or hive-like living of the Beozhnee as traits of 'futuristic' development, but in his illustration of the contrast between the two groups, such conventions work.

A precise realism, as well as attention to illustrative details, make both groups elicit one's empathy: on the Beozhnee side, despite their futuristic colors, the pleased expression of the technologically advanced Beozhnee developer as he regards his new insect bio-design, or the protectiveness of the Beozhnee woman cradling her child, show these smooth-bodied folk are far from alien. Meanwhile, the farm-hats and leather breeches of the Shukawgoan settlers draw on connections with the hard-working settlers of the Old West. One feels an affinity with their homely, honest faces -- and yet the bloody war-dance portrayed in Revelry illustrates some of the chilling violence which is also part of human heritage. La Gattuta's renderings imply that these are two groups whose aims are not so different that they could not work together. Both are environmentally minded, yet end up at war.

Like the best science fiction writers, La Gattuta expresses, through a popular medium, a storytelling that uses the new to frame truths already known, here a commentary: on human nature, on colonization, on the suspicion between two differing human groups. La Gattuta's renderings work effectively on several levels. Though many of them are intriguing as individual works, they are best seen as a group, with the subtleties of illustration and the movement in images from one work to the next creating the story: a story fascinating, chilling, sobering, and timely. La Gattuta's future is a blend of contemporary concerns, futuristic wonder, and age-old human nature. Erik La Gattuta: Shuhkawgo will be at Gescheidle through February 7, 2004.

--Katherine Rook Lieber

Katherine Rook Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.