Bruce Tapola, Clea Felien and Francis Gomila @ Franklin Art Works

by Valerie Valentine

Once again, Franklin Art Works manages to suck me into its gracious space. The renovated theater always contains a proper dosage of quality art. FAW Director Tim Peterson possesses magnificent tastes, not to mention some handy international connections that make for intriguing exhibitions. The latest mix features two local painters, and a British film artist.

Painters Bruce Tapola and Clea Felien have been around the block a few times.
Felien’s diverse education at MCAD and the Atelier distinguishes her as an artist with an unusual background in both contemporary art and classical realism. A broken wrist would not inhibit her creativity; the right-arm dominant painter taught herself to draw with her left hand, an experiment that has generated a signature style.

Felien’s portraits caricature family, friends and creatures. Whimsy of animal imaginings contrasts with somberness of a self-portrait, taken from a high-school yearbook photo. The girlish hairstyle and shy smile belie an inner wound, visible through thick, drab oils blotched around the eyes and nose. Use of the less-dexterous left hand awakens childlike, innocent associations, which also convey a raw honesty. Certainly, there is no prettifying of the subjects; each is exaggerated in expression and form.

Tapola’s new works come out large and flat as can be. An enormous, sunny canvas called “The Nice Day” shows an iconic rainbow, and a snail with no shell. It’s like a little girl’s bedroom mural from the ’70s (creepy snail notwithstanding). A gigantic maw of black looms in the aptly titled, “Le Hole,” creating a vast emptiness. The most resonant piece of the lot is “The Good Listener,” where an anxious-looking young man presses his ear to a door. For me it evoked an immediate emotional response, of knowing too many secrets too soon. The rest of the new paintings might be about pop imagery, commercialism, or disintegration of art in a digital world … it’s hard to say. Tapola is leaving it up to the viewer to fill in the blanks.

Francis Gomila’s video projection, however, really hooked me. This work appeals to all our juiciest voyeuristic tendencies. By placing a video camera on a rotating turntable in the center of a room, the artist captures living spaces of the Oxmoor estate in Huntingdon, England. In each one and a half minute rotation, the occupant is filmed within his or her personal space. With a slow pan of the camera, we can see walls, close-ups of doorknobs and shelves, the shot works like an extended stilllife, paradoxical in its movement. By filming bedrooms, blankets, walls, and personal knickknacks, Gomila curates a fascinating museum of private citizens. This documentary exercise acknowledges real, ordinary people as worthy of artistic representation. The strangeness rivets interest and holds the viewer oddly mesmerized.

The exhibit continues through Mar. 27. Call for hours. Franklin Art Works, 1021 E. Franklin Ave., Mpls. 612-872-7494.