June Ahrens Sculpture

Sculptor's work, on display at the Nelson, invites reflection on 9-11

Nothing is whole in the world of June Ahrens.

The Connecticut-based sculptor speaks through a vocabulary of fragments - shattered mirrors, broken glass jars - in works that evoke the transience and fragility of life.

Two recent works by Ahrens are on display at the Kemper Museum in the exhibit, "June Ahrens: Acquisitions in Context." One is a sculpture that the museum recently added to the permanent collection. The other is a new version of an installation Ahrens first showed in 2008 at the Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, Conn.

Kemper curator Barbara O'Brien timed the show to coincide with the tenth anniversary of 9/11. At the time of the attack Ahrens lived in lower Manhattan, less than 10 blocks from ground zero. The experience had an indelible effect on her life and art - both works in the show conjure an ethereal realm of shadows, reflections and ghosts.

In the installation piece, "Hiding in Plain Site," (2008), overlapping mirror shards fan out from one corner of the Barbara Uhlmann Gallery. A rotating spotlight above throws crystalline reflections on the walls and ceiling and on viewers standing in its path, engaging them as participants.

Looking down, they can see their own reflections, like Narcissus at his pond. But the fragments splinter their images, pulling them into the drama of destruction implied by the shards, just as the flitting reflections seem to offer glimpses of a realm inhabited by the departed.

For its initial showing in 2008, Ahrens arranged the shards in a circular configuration as opposed to the wedge formation at the Kemper, and it does seem that something is lost when one can't walk around the work's entire perimeter. It also feels cramped in this setting, which denies visitors the anticipation of a long approach.

O'Brien met Ahrens just after 9/11 and was drawn to her 2002 "Healing Hearts Project," a collaborative installation honoring the victims of 9/11. The artist invited people to contribute 3,000 fabric hearts, which she arranged in two 13-foot diameter circles representing the twin towers.

Since then, O'Brien has included Ahrens' work in three exhibitions and spearheaded the Kemper's acquisition of her 2010 sculpture, "Still Standing."

Featuring a series of broken and reassembled glass vessels atop a glass and aluminum table, the work suggests the treasured and rescued remnants of an explosion.

In an interview at the gallery, Ahrens said she enlisted friends to save their pickle, jam, mason, mustard and baby food jars. She used 21 of them in "Still Standing."

"I broke them all," she said. "Each is reconstituted in a new, fractured form."

Compared with the mythic reach of "Hiding in Plain Site," "Still Standing" reads as celebration of the individual's indomitable spirit.

The craggy, listing vessels, some stuffed with splinters of glass, read as surrogates for survivors. O'Brien characterized them as "a gathering of souls."

In an interview at the gallery, Ahrens said she was drawn to the table for its connotations of domesticity, and also spoke of her attraction to "things that reflect light." Like the installation, reflections play an important part in "Still Standing." But here, too, the work is compromised by the gallery, where the gray carpeting (which has to go!) necessitated the addition of a white platform below the table to capture the reflections.

Despite the less-than-optimum display space, the exhibit fulfills its mission to provide context for this latest acquisition, and allows Ahrens' stated concern with "loss, pain, fragility and danger" to come through.

ON EXHIBIT

"Acquisitions in Context: June Ahrens" is at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd. Call 816-753-5784, or go to www.kemperart.org. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays. The exhibit continues through Dec. 24. Admission is free.