boom boom crash

Durham artist Casey Cook's second installation at Branch Gallery, Boom Boom Crash, tries to provoke the edginess of a feminist manifesto, but the exhibit suffers from overextension and a muffled theme.

The collection brings together paintings, sculptures, photographs and performances to portray elements of time-warped womanhood. The most compelling of the pieces is a pair of large acrylic paintings. Complex, colliding forms create pictures within pictures-the curves of legs double as the frame for faces to produce a visually busy but intriguing web of iconographic images.

More straight-forward, a handful of smaller canvases with block-type catch phrases echo Mondrian designs. Vernacular expressions, such as "Are you for real" and "And then and then," are set against a palette of muted colors. Though the colloquialisms present witty commentary on modern feminine speak, the aesthetics of the paintings themselves are lackluster.

On the reverse of the same wall, a series of eight photographs depicting scenes of 1950s' domesticity is more successful in eliciting emotions. Strung together by reoccurring images of masks and high heels, the grainy images of bedrooms and soft-core porn suggest a trapped sensation on the part of the women in the pictures.

The most ambiguous element of the installation is Cook's performance piece, "Circle Triangle Army." She and seven silver-unitard-clad girls dance to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." Their mimed convulsions-viewed on multiple screens from multiple angles-are supposed to mirror "the personification of musical instruments," according to a gallery press release. The result is more baffling than symbolic.

Though some elements of the exhibit are conceptually interesting, Boom Boom Crash is not a fully developed, cohesive installation, and any "bang" that Cook hopes for may be delayed.

Boom Boom Crash is on display through Dec. 20 at Branch Gallery, 401c Foster Street in Durham. The gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday, 12 to 6 p.m.