Tami Demaree.

Zellen, Jody

Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles CA November 4 * December 23, 2006

Love, or love lost, is the theme that dances through Tami Demaree's first solo exhibition at Angstrom. Demaree's work is not restricted to any particular medium. She makes paintings, sculptures, and wall pieces using found as well as original materials, and weaves them together to produce a salon-style installation that occupies the entire space.

Entering the exhibition under a colorful canopy of plastic garlands, one is immediately submerged in Tami's poignant yet ironic world. Hanging from the ceiling are brightly colored felt pennants spelling out the show's title, "I'll Cross My Fingers But I Won't Hold My Breath," like something littering a teenager's bedroom alongside rock or movie posters. Yet Demaree does not leave things alone. While she begins with posters or found postcards, she ends up "adjusting" them, covering them with her lovelorn sound bytes. In Smitten (all work 2006), Demaree blacks out the majority of the original ready-made, leaving only two white-mittened hands, a red mouth, two wide-open eyes, and the roughly scrawled title word. This framed print is hung adjacent to a large canvas depicting a brightly painted nude figure with a wolf's head and yellow smiley face breast.

Presented overall in a complex, interwoven pattern of interrelationships, the individual works themselves conjure sentimental or matter-of-fact thoughts of unrequited love. Some are quite blunt, such as the Styrofoam floor sculpture Oh My God You're Right That Hurt featuring a large knife piercing a heart. Or take the modified cactus to whose bifurcated shape have been added the letters "HU" and "RT." In I Shouldn't Have Texted You Back, It Made Me Look Desperate, blue tears made of neon spurt from a large eye painted directly on the wall. Often words cover found posters or paintings, as in I'm Just Trying to Do The Right Thing. I'm Sorry If It Hurts. Despite the clutter, however, Demaree has quite methodically juxtaposed her pieces to create a larger narrative whose message is a plea for sympathy but without in any way becoming mired in personal loss.

This back-and-forth between different styles and contents infuses Demaree's work with a higher purpose than simply mocking the trials and tribulations of romantic love. She is a skilled illustrator who is well able to tell stories through her cartoon-like paintings, many of which depict animal pairings to represent human couples. I Can't Believe I Treated You ThisWay shows a large orange bear carrying a limp green deer across a snow-filled landscape. I Follow You Anywhere features two brightly colored dolphins swimming in opposite directions across a fantastical seascape. Although it appears Demaree doesn't take herself too seriously and clearly had fun making these works, there is an underlying message here. The observations are universal--the fact that the artist can mask emotions in animated drawings and lighthearted sculptures doesn't make the pain that precipitated them disappear.