4 degrees of art

Arizona Daily Wildcat Artwork courtesy Joseph Labate Joseph Labateâs 1995 piece ãDancerä is part of Four Degrees which will be showing through May 8 at the Hazmat Gallery. Labate includes images for their aesthetic, rather than emotional quality.

Shorr's contributions, entitled "White Noise," were by far the most intriguing works in the exhibit. His approach takes vintage-looking black and white photographs and selectively covers them in white paint. The photographs look like old family portraits or vacation pictures with a twist. The "family" includes a '50s-style housewife surrounded by monkeys instead of children. Scenes at the beach look like a European holiday rather than a Californian vacation, with men of all ages in full nude.

Shorr cleverly conceals and reveals in the image what he chooses with the application of white paint. This technique works like the frame of a photograph, focusing the attention of the viewer on specific subjects, and hiding others, like contrasting nudes with painted-over images.

Labate's signature look captures a posed still-life, with the focus softening toward the edge of the frame. Almost all the photographs are washed over in blue, red, yellow or green light, reminiscent of Warhol's series and duplications in printmaking. Labate does not just show a singular image but repeats the same one in a work, a repetition that either strengthens the meaning behind a piece or diminishes it completely.

Labate includes images for their aesthetic, rather than emotional quality. When he tries to address serious issues in this collection, Labate runs dangerously close to trivializing them. One such work is titled "Cops," with frames of flashlights and chains. Another is "Domestic Violence," with contrasting images of bullets and ballerinas. The photographs are stylish and beautiful, but fail to show a genuine concern for the subjects.

Working in a completely different mode, Daly represents her style in a number of acrylic or oil paintings. All of her paintings show curvilinear, organic abstractions. These shapes sometimes appear like flowers or plants, other times like cross-sections of roots or veins. "Snausages" is an amusing rendition of these organic shapes, showing slices of sausage. One of her most beautiful works looks like a variation on Monet's paintings, with water lilies on a pond and brightly colored flowers in the background. Daly's greatest talent lies in her sense of color harmony. The different compositions of grays and blues, blue-greens, or reds and oranges give her works a feeling of balance and tranquillity.

In comparison with the other works in Four Degrees, Lumenello's art is considerably dwarfed in size. She concentrates on miniature mixed-media paired with homely cross-stitchings of popular sayings most often directed toward women, like "Patience is a virtue." Underneath, she constructs miniature mouse traps in various themes like Cinderella or Valentine's Day. Lumenello's works suggest a subversion to cultural myths relating to women, but the format fails to make a strong statement. The quaint miniatures and cross-stitch would be more appropriate as novelties on a grandmother's knick-knack shelf.

Shorr, Labate, Daly and Lumenello all work in their own unique styles, but they each venture off in their own direction, giving the exhibit a very discordant feeling. Overall, the diversity of Four Degrees weakens the impact of the exhibit.