Staring at Gord Peteran’s sculpture “Untitled So Far,” an almost phallic bulge of wood, I sought to figure out where this object could possibly belong: Bobbing out at sea, like a buoy? Or maybe in the aisles of a fashionable sex shop? An ancient tomb?
The answer is inside the Museum of Art in Wood, where a lot of uncannily implacable shapes are on display for the gallery’s ongoing show, “Strange Woodcraft.”
Wood has a strong reputation: It’s solid, durable, utilitarian. But this exhibit offers an alternative picture of the material, promoting takes on the medium that “feel out of place, askew, haunting or just downright odd.”
Wandering through ostensibly misshapen but evidently deliberate works of wood, I wondered what constitutes weirdness without ever questioning whether a single sculpture in the show deserved to be called strange. Each artwork was, without a doubt, bizarre.
Peteran’s smooth, salmon-colored piece was the most uncomfortably intimate thing I encountered: Sunken in some spots and swelling in others, the piece had a kind of flesh-like resonance that reminded me of a severed human member, an unnamable body part.
Most of the other whittled objects found their weirdness through the integration of alien qualities. Needles, for instance, as seen on the porcupine or sea urchin, were common motifs. In “Art Object to be Destroyed,” a piece by Hilary Pfeifer and Neil Scobie pictured above, perfectly pink matches coat what look like thick, black cactus leaves packed into a melon rind. You could compare the shape to a mouth filled with a million tongues. Excessive surface material is adorned by fire strikers, which resemble acupuncture pins but imply immediate destruction if lit.
In “Pupa,” a piece by Satoshi Fujinuma, the spines are much smaller, but still prominent. The spikes are seen on the shell of the piece, a lighter wood which covers a ribbed, reptilian-looking belly underneath. The spines look like they are covering the flesh of a turtle. In the dim light of the gallery, I could easily imagine the stomach breathing, in and out.
Is the sense of body but absence of a self what makes these pieces untethered from place and time? The texture of skin — of raw flesh or pointed spines — distances these sculptures from the objects we typically reserve for wood carving, like the rolling pin or the salad bowl, and towards an earlier form of evolution. The idea that spikes might be poisonous or shouldn’t be touched is deep in our reptilian brains. Is this where eeriness resides, too?
It’s almost too easy to exploit the human impulse to stare — especially in the context of a traditional gallery. While gawking at the museum’s collection of wooden oddities, I was taken back to a haptic art house I recently visited where a group of self-described “mad” artists offered visitors the opportunity to touch their work.
A hands-on approach might be a more creative entryway to “Strange Woodcraft” — what weirder way to engage with this exhibit than to not only observe but to feel the smooths, spines and folds? Beyond damaging the art, I see another risk at play. Touching is a way of grounding ourselves, of finding familiarity with the unknown. Once we’re at home with strange bedfellows, won’t the weird disappear?
Clay Davis is a writer, textile artist and educator focused on Disability Justice. Their experience as a wheelchair user helps them to bring the Disabled perspective to their writing as well as to the classroom. They are based in West Philadelphia and love to explore the theme of access in art.
This review first appeared in Midbrow, an initiative of the nonprofit Online Journalism Project. It aims to seed a network of writers in cities across the country to review in-person local arts and cultural events.
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