"One Lady Show": Rebekah Eugenia Lazaridis @ Crislip Arcade

View inside the gallery: Two works by Rebekah Eugenia Lazaridis

Rebekah Eugenia Lazaridis, one of the two sisters (the other is Rachel Woods Anderson) who own and run the shop Eugenia Woods, in the Crislip Arcade on the 600 block, was first reviewed here for her work at the Artbook Launch. She is a local, born and raised here, by a family with long roots in the Bay area who went to the Art Institute of Chicago and worked in NYC as a film and theater scenic painter. Saturday, April 14th, she staged a solo show in an unoccupied space in the Crislip Arcade, more or less across the hallway from her store.

R.E. Lazaridis, "House No.1"

"House No. 2"

The walls were covered in black plastic sheeting, which was disorienting, and gave everything a floating feel. There were five paintings in the show, on discarded theatrical set wood scraps.

In each of the paintings, there's a house. It looks like the same house in all of them, seen from a straight-on frontal view. On the left is "House No. 1". Here we see the house threatened by water. Note the highly stylized waves. On the right, "House No. 2". Here the house is threatened by fire. The flames are similarly stylized to the waves in "House No. 1".

"House No. 3"

"House No. 4"

"House No. 3" reminds the viewer s/he's not in Kansas anymore. Here the House is threatened by wind in the form of a tornado. The asymmetry of No. 3 is an excellent composition. "House No. 4" involves an earthquake,which was not an easy thing to depict/suggest without blur, but Lazaridis uses dust being raised horizontally to good effect, and those clouds recede right into the sky. The House(s) are threatened by the four Elements: Air, Land, Wind and Fire, but looks unaffected in each instance.

Rebekah E. Lazaridis, "House of Six"

In the last painting, the house is depicted divided into six panels, and titled "House of Six". Of Six. Allusions to family? The show had the feel of a meta narrative, if not an initiation.

This was an unexpected gem of a show. Congratulations to Rebekah Lazaridis for a tight, compact, high-quality show beautifully staged, all in an improvised space.

--- Luis