On the face of it, photo exhibit signifies little

Friday, January 30, 1981 

By Alan G. Artner 

Art critic 

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC installation by Jane Wenger that opens Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art is a remarkable environment that signifies very little, if anything at all. 

Ten drastically cropped photographs of men’s faces under stress have been enlarged to mural size, specially mounted, and dimly lighted in an all-black room. Various grunts and groans from an edited four-track tape are bounced around the space. The size of the images ensures that we will see the faces almost as landscapes. The accompanying sounds suggest land­scapes of pain. 

One immediately recalls the long artistic tradition of effigies of suffering. Wenger engages us on this level, but only viscerally, for a moment. Once the stomach is settled, there is meaning to be sought. 

With all the careful stagecraft – every detail is admirably controlled – we nonetheless are not led to l’leep feelings or thoughts. Absent is the sense of human emotions being drawn together and summarized. Where one is led to expect something universal and cathartic, there is only a thrill. 

That can be powerful. It is here. But it does not convince us. We believe it as theater. And it is as easy as believing the devil is a little girl whose head spins around and vomits pea soup. 

By contrast, the overpainted photomurals of Arnulf Rainer and (to go back further in time) the straight documentary images of Jacob Riis each in their differ­ent ways put us in touch with a suffering too real to_ be borne. Such pictures heighten life as it is lived. They are painful and true, not fashionably grotesque. 

One would like to think that was what Wenger was after. I thought so upon seeing a small print of one of the faces in a group exhibition two years ago. But now it is hard to be sure. Her installation shocks us well enough to suggest that shock is really what it’s about. (Through March 22.)