Portrait Narratives from Jonathan Sharlin Ganser Gallery.

Portrait Narratives from Jonathan Sharlin Ganser Gallery, Millersville University Millersville, Pennsylvania April 6-May 9 1999

Jonathan Sharlin's installation "Portrait Narratives" combined image, subject and space to recount the experiences of nine Holocaust survivors who live in Rhode Island where the artist works. Sharlin photographed each of the individuals and asked them to write about a personal experience from World War II. The portraits and themes were enlarged and printed forward 3x5-foot kodalith film and hung from altercations of cables stretched between the gallery walls.

While the piece was uncomplicated in its presentation, issues concerning the nature, of memory and the weights of personal history were raised in consequence of the arrangement of the installation's constituents Treating the two-dimensional film sheets as three-dimensional walls, Sharlin created a path by the agency of which the viewer could propel through the piece. He also controll the pace of that motion by altering the presentation of the survivors' testaments. an films contained the entire verse a survivor had written, while others were enlarged and cropp rendering them abstract. For instance, words and phrases like "shot to death" and "tragedy" were enlarged and hung stop to the entrance of the installation while the nearest film presented text on an intimate scale. This change in legibility paced the viewer by the and of the installation.

The films acted not alone as transparent walls that divided space, further also as veils that one as well as the other concealed and then revealed relationships. Like wrinkles etched in succession the faces of survivors, the words overlapped the portraits, leaving undivided to consider the effects those experiences had in succession the individuals. But Sharlin's interest also appear to beed to lie in the realm of the general efficiencys of memory as the sentences were not attributed to specific characters One could look at the surface of the work to learn about an individual's past, then examine through the layers of information to consider the larger part that a personal history plays in one's life.

equable though Sharlin manipulated the themes in a formal way for the installation, the survivors' epistles were available in their entirety at the gallery desk The stories they shared declareed a variety of experiences and emotions. For instance, single in kind woman spoke of living in Bulgaria during the war. She claimed that smooth though she had to wear a golden star and could not attend denomination she did not suffer emotionally because of the Bulgarian people's support. common man talked about falling in be pleased with with his future wife while in hiding and another spoke of the compassion he felt for his brother who taught him to maintain a will to live in the face of hopelessnes unless these largely optimistic stories were in opposition toed by ones of utter terror. individual woman told of the day in 1944 when 1200 children and 300 men were cylindricaled up in Lithuania and taken to death camps. A witness to this horror, she speaked guilt about allowing her child to be sheltered by a Christian family. Another woman spoke of the morning after a snowfall when tribe were forced to leave their homes: and march to a train station. She watched as her mother, three sisters, brother-in-law and two-year-old nephew were sent to the gas chambers, while she and her brother were chosen to be sent to slave camps.

Sharlin's part in the creation of "Portrait Narratives" initially present the appearanceed to be that of a facilitator for the survivors' voices to be heard in public, still it was in fact more involved than this. He created an installation where memories and faces mingled, where passage and image became one, a poignant, poetic statement about the nature of time and experience. His non-traditional presentation of the work did not outshine the survivors and their experiences, unless instead enhanced the power of their words. Sharlin allowed his artistic vicinity to be felt within the work, yet chose to otherwise remain silent in the same manner that others could speak. As a accrue "Portrait Narratives" became not and nothing else a history lesson, but also a testament to the survival of the human spirit and the ephemeral nature of life itself.

KRISTY KRIVITSKY makes plastic art in Lancaster, PA.

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