On the lids of sepulchers tucked along the aisles of Gothic cathedrals, marble mannequins sprawl in the customary myth of sleep rather than death. But the effigies that Susan Classen-Sullivan has fashioned are of unquestionable corpses—though amphibian rather than human—most of them inflated in scale, and not recumbent, but flung upright in all their rictus glory. These are the artist’s memorials to the multitudes of these creatures flattened on the deadly roads of early spring. artes fine arts magazine

The splendid paradox here is that, though cadavers, they suggest animated stills from some oddly costumed line of Rockettes or Looney Tunes choreography or the flailing trance of a deaf mute in the second act of Waiting for Godot. And the accident of several tables and chairs, left temporarily behind in the gallery from a previous night’s reception, did briefly hint that a performance of Pina Bausch’s Café Müller was imminent, with a dancer about to throw the furniture out of the way of the silently wandering frogs.

Death does have its dance, after all, set in this case to imaginary music. But for all their grace and delicacy, there is a darkness to these solid ghosts, like the stone Commendatore who arises at the conclusion of Mozart’s Don Giovanni to drag the defiant sinner into hell. And though they are thwarted demons, with their threat rendered fragile by the porcelain of which they are fashioned, there is still something about them that leaves us grateful for their slaughter.

Two of the figures are rendered as only slightly larger than life (or death) size, each set alone on a wide expanse of wall. Within these dimensions, they become knickknacks of horror, or anguished toys, an encouragement to the smug confidence of the marketplace that here we have Nature at our mercy.

But do we indeed? There is another text that fills this particular room with its account of a landscape that “will swarm with frogs; they will make their way into your palace, into your bedroom, onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and subjects…” Perhaps it is the memory of that biblical plague at the end of which the dead animals were “piled up in heaps and the country stank” that reminds us of the consequences of human indifference to what the world requires of us. And these figures, stark beneath their spotlights, may be among the last of God’s warnings.

By Stephen Kobasa, Contributing Writer

“LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE” (corpse series) ceramic, 2007-09
Corpses 1-5 comprise this wall-mounted installation intended for a discrete space.

Through April 8, 2012

Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT 860-232-1006 www.realartways.org