The Temporary Space hosted another solid installation, and like the earlier suite of Francis Giampietro assemblages, this show, Genesis by Terry Suprean, took manhood as its subject. Specifically, Suprean looks at fatherhood, trying to encompass in his work a range of fatherhood from ordinary fathers and sons to God the Father to patriarchy in human society. These are some pretty big notions for an artist to take on, and Suprean is not really successful in nailing it all. But what does come through is surprisingly moving.

One of thirty portraits of Terry Suprean's father
The first piece the viewer sees on entering is a grid of thirty drawings and paintings, ten across in three rows. Each one is either a pencil drawing, a watercolor painting, or blank. They depict a man who in some pictures has a beard, in some has a moustache, has slightly different hair in some, and in the last few drawings, appears to have white hair. This man is, in fact, Suprean’s father. Suprean was born when his father was thirty. Suprean is thirty now, and each of the images is derived from a photograph of his father taken each year for the past thirty years (the blank images are from years where Supean didn’t have a photo of his father available). In most of the pictures, Suprean’s father is smiling, and in a few he is stern. He wears gimme caps in some, and appears to be dressed up in costume in others. In one, he is wearing a military style beret, and in another, he is wearing a business suit. Throughout, he seems very “dad-like.” One’s first thought is that this is not a work of resentment or a critique of fatherhood (much less a critique of Suprean’s dad). On the contrary, Suprean seems to be wrestling with a kind of common dilemma—comparing himself to his father, especially as his father had, at age thirty, accomplished a pretty profound piece of creation—Suprean himself! (Of course, this was accomplished in collaboration with Suprean’s mother—whose utter absence in this show is striking.)

A story of getting the sex talk from dad, with a knife included
Then there are two wall pieces. Each one uses a blocky text to tell a story of childhood. One is carved into the drywall with a pocket knife. The story told in the text is about getting the sex talk from his father. The other text piece is about accidentally wounding a bird a powerful slingshot. Suprean’s father helps them kill the wounded animal, skins it and cooks it—not because it was good eating, but first as a mercy (if you wound an animal, you must put it out of its misery) and then as a lesson that killing should never be merely for sport. The wall is embedded with metal pellets, and on the floor you see the slingshot (a big wooden one, obviously capable of inflicting serious damage). In each piece, Suprean indicates that the lesson learned was a good one. There may be irony in that, but it’s hard to detect. It feels like he’s making a simple statement about these quintessentially masculine father and son moments.

The last piece is the weakest, and yet ironically the one that speaks most to the bigger themes. A video projector on the floor is projecting up to the ceiling. The ceiling is covered with fluffy white cotton, representing clouds. The projector itself is disguised as a mountain. The video is a loop of Suprean’s father saying “Before me there is nothing.” Here he is associating his father with God, and giving his father a somewhat grandiose, Biblical-sounding phrase to repeat. But this contradicts the other pieces.

Because whatever examination of patriarchy Suprean intended, what comes across is a rather touching tribute to his father, executed in the language of contemporary art. Contemporary art is often spiky and ironic, full of implied (or explicit) criticisms of society and culture at large. If there is an irony here, it is seeing this artistic language used as an expression of love. Genesis is an early father’s day card.