Nikki Renee Anderson puts the stories in pictures

Some images tell us clearly what is going on, while others leave the interpretation up to the viewer

By Lori Waxman, Special to the Tribune

3:28 p.m. CST, February 1, 2012

(Excerpt)

Somewhere out in the mossy tumbles of an Icelandic meadow, a mischievous creature has popped three bulbous blue heads out of the earth, bobbly unicorn horn first. On a nearby hillock, other alien forms bloom: a pale family of pointy teardrops and an elegant bird-thing with light jowls and a round beak.

I know of these peculiar emergences because Nikki Renee Anderson displays photographs of them in her solo exhibition at Dubhe Carreno Gallery. Anderson is a nimble ceramist who created the odd clay objects in this series of images set in the mythological Icelandic landscape, home to ice trolls, rock people and all sorts of elves.

Iceland'sscrubby, cratered fields could not be more welcoming to her fanciful sculptures, but Anderson could instead have set them on the floor of the gallery, or perched them on pedestals. She could even have hung them on the walls as if they'd grown there. She does as much with the other ceramics on view in "Secret Bodies," plump pastel marshmallows that charmingly belie the hardness of their medium..

If Anderson had simply shown her sculptures in the gallery, their make-believe Icelandic genesis would be unknown. It might not even exist.

Words tell stories, of course, but photographs possess a unique narrative force all their own. They can give an entirely believable, utterly new life to the objects captured by their lenses. When this happens to inanimate objects, like Anderson's strange sprouting shapes, it is as if the dead thing has — click goes the camera — come to life, set amid the greenery of a breathing landscape. When it happens to people, it is another kind of story entirely.

"Nikki Renee Anderson: Secret Bodies," through Feb. 11 at Dubhe Carreno, 118 N. Peoria St., 312-666-3150 or dubhecarrenogallery.com; "Viktoria Sorochinski: Anna & Eve," through Feb. 25 at Catherine Edelman, 300 W. Superior St. or 312-266-2350;edelmangallery.com; "Laura Mackin: 120 Years," through Feb. 25 at ThreeWalls, 119 N. Peoria St., 312-432-3972, or three-walls.org

Lori Waxman is a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune, and an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

ctc-arts@tribune.com

Twitter @chitribent

To read the complete article in the Chicago Tribune's website : click here