Alter Egos: Voices From Inside

Curator: Marty Shuter


The silent conversations we have inside our heads are more convoluted and complex than the ones we dare express out loud. They are too often colored by the contradiction of who we want to be and who we really are, the demands on our time that pull us away from what we really want to do, and emotions that are non-linear and nonsensical and carry with them the weight of an unavoidable truth. The art of Beth Cavener Stichter, Janis Mars Wunderlich and Marty Shuter are manifestations of their own inescapable inner dialogues. They are metaphors for aggression, isolation, desire and feral tension. They are treatises on being exhausted, overburdened and ultimately and fantastically responsible for life. They are intimate portraits of vulnerability and exposure, familiarity and anonymity, disconnectedness and being necessarily related.

The sculptures, on their own, have an innate narrative that is both disconcerting and familiar. They draw you in with a discomforting attraction. Stichter mixes animal body language with human proportions and gestures that result in psychological portraits that are subtly feral all too recognizable. Wunderlich, too, combines animal with human, this time to give an uneasy edginess to motherhood. In the world of her art, two-headed mothers wear their offspring like possums carry their young and birth is attended by the whole family. Shuter gives a literal face to her own emotional life with made-up portraits that are both secretive and raw.

Alter Egos: Voices from Inside will put the three artists' work in new relationships. The resulting connections between the sculptures will lead to deeper exploration of expressions of our humanness.