Review: Isabelle Pauwels installation tantalizes, then frustrates

The subject is fascinating — its presentation less so.

Isabelle Pauwels' installation at the Henry, "Incredibly, unbelievably / The complete ordered field," both tantalizes and frustrates as it reflects on her family's experiences in the Congo during the last days of Belgian colonial rule.

Pauwels is the first winner of the $12,500 Brink Award, established by John and Shari Behnke to support and highlight the work of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia artists in the early stages of their careers. The award is administered through the Henry Art Gallery, where the Behnkes are longtime benefactors.

Pauwels will have one of her works acquired for the museum's permanent collection. She also gets this awkwardly titled exhibit at the Henry.

Its centerpiece is a grass hut in which a 34-minute video, "W.E.S.T.E.R.N.," is visible through the windows. It draws heavily from 8 mm film footage that Pauwels' maternal grandfather, an agronomist, shot on a Congolese coffee plantation in the years before the country's independence in 1960.

His camera encompasses everything from dinner parties and holiday celebrations to hard labor in the fields and payday routines at harvest time.

Elsewhere, local residents — both native and European — travel the hilly landscape, their body language speaking not just of master-servant relationships but of seemingly cheery, candid contact. (In one sequence, two kids play dress-up with a servant — all three clearly enjoying themselves).

These home movies come with no direct commentary or identification of time and place. Instead they're intercut with contemporary video footage shot around Pauwels' parents' home in suburban Vancouver, B.C.

As Pauwels interviews her mother, the camera zeros in on sculptures and artifacts that have traveled from Africa to Canada.

A lamp stand made from a coffee-plant trunk gets a lot of attention. So do coffee scales that are no longer farm tools but pieces of interior decoration.

Images from past and present are juxtaposed, turned upside down and rhythmically fragmented. Pauwels has said she's attempting "to disrupt the viewer's expectations of how a genre operates."

The trouble is her disruptions obscure more than they reveal, making her seem more interested in her own editing trickery than in the people, time and place that "W.E.S.T.E.R.N." portrays.

An additional 8-minute video projected outside the hut recounts the family's last day in the Congo in detail that's vivid but sketchy.

The exhibit also includes photo collages drawn from Pauwels' grandfather's archives. But with both the photos and the videos, it's hard to see how Pauwels' artistic touch adds anything to the material that fell into her lap.

The setup may be striking — but her methods feel more reductive than illuminating.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com