Los Angeles Times Sunday April 30,2000
By Josef Woodard - Special to the Times
Double Trouble: The ranks of actors and musicians who also express themselves through visual art are swollen.
The number of those who do it well, and have something to say in the visual
realm, is another story entirely. From that rare category comes the
Canadian-born actor Duncan Regehr. It helps, of course, that art has been a part
of his creative live for decades, and a dominant medium rather than an
afterthought.
Regehr is in Ventura these days mainly in thespian mode, to perform in “The Little Foxes” at the Laurel Theatre, but we also get an enriching glimpse of his visual aesthetic in an exhibition in the theatre’s hallways, and it’s well worth a look.
It’s tempting to see theater in the pieces, which tend to read like narrative puzzles or fables begin to be decoded, but they speak most boldly on more strictly artistic, even abstract, terms.
Ambiguities and odd tensions abound in his works, which have textured surfaces suggesting wall friezes but build up beguiling little psychodramas in their iconography. Regehr shows a playful deviousness of artistic means, concocting dream-like vignettes and figures whose details place them somewhere between a dark cartoon world and a scruffy expressionist’s repertoire.
In ”The Cutter,” themes of sexual tension and the clutch of inhibitions seem to arise, in an image with a man cutting his tie while a sultry, smoking woman behind him is echoed in a doll, also smoking.
In “Orpheus,” a woman watches over a disaffected-looking young man with musical instruments, in a claustrophobic room, an ocean view making its tacit appeal out the window.
And in “Daedalus,” a bald artist marks up a wall with pictographs verging on graffiti, with a Raggedy Ann doll at his feet, while a boy on the beach beyond flies a kit, igniting a sense of impending doom.
Regehr’s curious scenarios invite interpretation, in one sense, even as they elude easy reading.
But in the main, they succeed because they have an evocative and personal visual language to convey, beyond the mysteries of their parts.
Details
Duncan Regehr, through May 8 at the Laurel Theatre (Laurel entrance), 1006 E. Main St., Ventura, Hours: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.- 5 p.m., and half an hour before each performance of “The Little Foxes”.