Weaves and Extensions

Perhaps like a salon gone wild with an over-inflated advertising budget, Tarryn Teresa Gallery in downtown Los Angeles is taken over by monstrous hair pieces. A Crenshaw district wig shop stripped down but hopped up on steroids. Heavy metal and hair: remnants from the Bride of Frankenstein set run amok. No, the irony is in the strength and the subtle theme of this show by local artist Castillo. As caricature-ish and large as these hair installations can be, it is the order of the bad hair day that makes them work and sets them off — weighty yet with sheer elegance styled with thoughtfulness and meditative deliberation.

Hair, the very visible essence of the wildness within us, is teased but still tamed here for the viewer of the exhibit. The scale of the work is at odds with the containment and control of it and its core element, synthetic human hair. These situations have contradictory and dynamic, layered effects.

This viewer is easily freaked out by monumental figurative sculpture. Keep me away from the Lincoln and Mt. Rushmore monuments, Valle de Los Caidos, The Statue of Liberty, Christ the Redeemer and all rest. Hey, some people are scared of clowns. The two installations in the main space are placed a bit too close, and you have to squeeze between them to fully enjoy and inspect them. Getting so close to the massive hairballs of Ecliptic Eccentricity is almost disturbing, viscerally jarring and disorienting to the degree of pacing around a Lilliputian’s Gulliver or a prone 50-foot woman’s head. The eclipse becomes complete when looking at the piece along its length where the fifth platinum blonde giant orb blocks the view of the other four black ones, and vice-versa from the other, less navigable side. Ecliptic, that is, except for the few dangling tresses that hang unceremoniously from each globe, as if teased by some mad apprentice comb-slinger. Eccentric reminds me of similar work by the artist at the Junior Art Center at Barnsdall many years ago. Also ironic, and timely, that Castillo was selected by the city of Los Angeles as a C.O.L.A. art fellowship award-winner this year.

A single industrial hoist ring at a ceiling joist hooks the other focus in the same room. Doubled over and elegantly twisted over itself, Strand’s shipping-grade rope covers most of the room after cascading back to the ground in an unraveling display stretching across the floor. With a vague reference to Rapunzel, Strand invites whimsy and play but also issues warning and second thoughts about rifling straight through its blown-out-of-proportion intimacy. Yes, the rope instantly transfers industrial properties and uses to most personal and human ones; suddenly it’s just fairytale auburn dirty strawberry hair, albeit larger than life, and you just have to hold back and stare in wonder, trying to place it in context. Playing the scale trick, however, seems to be an after-effect conveyed by the static physicality of the work and not merely a deliberate attempt by the artist to fool you. Depending on the attitude of the substantive material and the disproportionate disposition of the viewer (such as mine), there remains plenty of curly wiggle room for respective reactions.

Divinia is an installation in the back room. A column of nylon, or some other synthetic cord, falls from the ceiling to the floor and, again, fanning out to the outer reaches. The strings encircle a small pile of black hair on the floor: afro-like, coarse black hair.  Orishas and sacred goddesses and rituals come to mind, and although it is hard to truly enter the piece, the very rare name can be defined as heavenly, divine or beloved. Simple yet all encompassing, the transparency of this subject resonates an ethereal hollowness while silently holding indeterminate weight.

Castillo is not an artist obsessed with just hair, but a human obsessed with scale and its inherent power over other humans. She has worked with other materials and properties to similar effect. Her marks are Herculean yet also delicate extensions of primitive and human physics. Furthermore, the artwork regroups inherently messy elements into columns of order and stasis. The show runs through June 18th.