Groundwork exhibit confronts horrors on Earth and beyond

“The beast in me has had to learn to live with pain. And how to shelter from the rain. And in the twinkling of an eye, might have to be restrained…”

— Nick Lowe

The current exhibition of work by Umberto Crenca and William Schaff at Groundwork has arrived with a disturbing timeliness.

With near eight-dozen drawings, paintings, works of embroidery and other media stacked salon-style in the alternative space’s entranceway and long hall, the display, as curated by Jessica Bregoli, induces a bit of claustrophobia and discomfort.

And it works beautifully, given the ugly moment in which we dance.

In the last week, a madman’s pipe bombs were posted to individuals with political stances he disagreed with, two African-American shoppers were gunned down in a Kentucky Kroger’s supermarket only after the killer was unable to enter a black church, and a Pittsburgh synagogue was turned into a slaughterhouse.

The exhibition by Crenca and Schaff does not comment on those events in particular — the show was installed earlier — but their artwork, individually and collectively, effectively resonates because the potential for those events, and other like them, are so with us.

Throughout the show, there are depictions of messiahs, ark builders, virgin mothers, sacred hearts, mythological creatures, stumbling angels, warriors who have lost their way, prison rapists, napalm droppers, and others — many dazed and confused. It is a world where any horror is possible. And likely.

Nausea of both the existentialist and gastrointestinal kinds are a recurrent theme throughout the exhibition. It is a virtual vomitorium of the dismayed and sickened, as the repulsed eject missiles, cadavers, and other objects from their gaping mouths.

Even in a room of art depicting sailors with fiery heads, skeletal horses, lupine monks, flaming swords, and a sad owl with human hands erupting from its feathered chest, some demand particular attention.

Visual and performing artist Umberto Crenca, artistic director and co-founder of AS220, the Providence non-profit art center, pulls no punches in his paintings of the 45th President. One such image is a skeleton in a MAGA hat with wisps of cornsilk hair sticking out. In one eye socket, there is a bullseye, with the word “POOR” in its center.

Crenca’s “Liar, Liar” is a painting with a priapic nose, perhaps made of paper mache, elongating from the 45th President’s face, much like a fibbing Pinocchio's would.

His “Animal Farm,” of course referencing George Orwell, features a giant swine with a crown on his head and the White House in the distance. A comic strip thought balloon above the pig’s head reads “All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others.”

William Schaff, a Warren, Rhode Island-based artist and musician, is no less subtle; and while his work has a political edge, it also delves into the Biblical, the mythological, and the deep recesses of the mind.

Schaff’s “Portrait of a Young Man, Filled with Hate” is an eerie depiction of impotent rage. An armless man, squirms on a couch, his head tilted in anger, and his eyes are but death’s head skulls. A television is his window to the world and likely the source of his despair.

“All Friends Leave You” by Schaff features three figures in strange embrace as at least one appears to depart the mortal coil.

Schaff’s “Cherubim” is not not an image of Raphael putti, there are no chubby, innocent winged babies. It is the tetramorph cherub of the Book of Ezekiel, a fantastic flying creature with four distinct heads: Man (representing humanity), Ox (domestic animals), Lion (wild animals), and Eagle (birds.) And it is gorgeous, with its ability to take us out of the moment.

“Umberto Crenca & William Schaff” is on display at Groundwork, 1213 Purchase St., New Bedford until Dec. 8. Use the Maxwell Street entrance.

Don Wilkinson is a painter and art critic who lives in New Bedford. Contact him at Don.Wilkinson@gmail.com. His reviews run each week in Coastin’.