Art in the pursuit of Victorian happiness

When it comes to art, I don't use the word "delightful" lightly; it can sound pretentious or frivolous. But as an indicator of the visual and intellectual pleasures that can be found in some art, sometimes the word just fits. Two local artists, Dawn Cerny and Alice Tippit, have provided us with a clever, lively and somewhat naughty installation, called "The Artful Scheme of Happiness," that is seriously delightful.

The installation fills up most of the gallery space at the SOIL Gallery with drawings, faux-gilded frames, silhouettes and such funky, witty objects as a chandelier made of used tea bags. The niceties and visual ephemera of 19th-century upper-class life are evoked through elements like miniature portraits and the sheer abundance of decorative material. It's like walking into a wildly eccentric yet still respectable Victorian's parlor.

Tippit and Cerny have fabricated the environment and memorabilia of a fictionalized millionaire. This unnamed character, who ambiguously inhabits a 19th-century lifestyle but who may live in the 20th century, has devoted himself to the pursuit of his own happiness.

Apparently, he is not successful. Cerny and Tippit's drawings and paintings display his narcissism, obsessions and futile exploits. This restless, fictive character seeks his happiness by embarking on ailment-cursed mountaineering expeditions, designing fantastic inventions and collecting erotica thinly veiled as fine art.

There is something fruitless and unstable in all of the evidence of his interests. The delicate watercolors of reclining nudes are tinged with abnormalities like extra fingers and hairy growths. His design for a treetop castle proves unworkable because nature won't support the weight of his scheme. It's as if this leisured man's relentless self-indulgence has embedded these items of beauty and fantasy with reminders of human frailty and perversion.

There are different models of expression at play here, modes of making art that create a fascinating contradiction. First, this elaborate, multi-part work of art was the product of collaboration from conception to final installation. Collaborating allows artists to step away from autonomous self-expression. Cerny and Tippit have taken that process one step further by expressing the world view of a third persona.

By creating a character that, in turn, generates expression, the artists stand within an avant-garde tradition of artists taking on alternative personae or alter egos. Marcel Duchamp played with gender roles and expectations with his alter ego, Rose Selavy, and Andy Warhol's flamboyant public self was as much a creation as his pop art silk-screens.

Exhibit review


"The Artful Scheme of Happiness," installation by Dawn Cerny and Alice Tippit at SOIL Gallery,

noon-5 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, through Sunday. 112 Third Ave. S., Seattle (206-264-8061 or www.soilart.org).

According to Cerny, the artists, who are also good friends, found that their collaborative development of the adventures and follies of this character often expressed "what we wish we could do ourselves if we didn't have any limitations." Ironically, the artists' desires were often checked by their commitment to staying true to the character they had created.

Cerny and Tippit have created hundreds of works that engage you in a sort of parlor game of deciphering who this elusive character is. Although the gallery guide lists many of the works as individual creations of either Cerny or Tippit, the pieces fit together seamlessly, joined by their well-conceived visual and conceptual structure.

The only off-note in this well-orchestrated romp is the collection of wonderfully weird silhouettes. They work thematically as emblems of the 19th-century obsession with mementos, but they aren't as integrated with the rest of the installation as they might be. And then there is the problem of misidentifying them as creations of Kara Walker, who has made such an impression with her racially charged silhouettes that the form is almost automatically associated with her.

But, on the whole, the installation is so chock-full of humor, bits of narrative, and references to 19th-century art and culture that an entire afternoon could be spent taking in its delights. Since there are only a few days left to see the show, perhaps this expedition could be part of your weekend.