Lisea Lyons at Marx & Zavattero

June 12, 3:25 PMSF Art ExaminerMarisa Nakasone

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Lisea Lyons' latest exhibition, Lineage, at Marx and Zavattero gallery forges inter-generational connections between the artist and her adolescent daughter--capturing quiet, stirring, and evanescent moments that often slip through memory.  The result is nostalgic and melacholy--providing a portrait of the artist as a mother observing her daughter's departure from childhood and of her daughter, entering into her teenage years as her mother once did before she. (Pictured above: Untitled, 2008).

Lyons prefaces the exhibition with remastered photographs from her formative years--images of her grandparents, her parents in their youth, and images of herself as an infant. Smaller in scale, grainier, and cropped in a close square, these photographs capture moments in which the subjects are aware of being photgraphed: they look at the camera, pose, smile, hold up a child for the photographer. These conventional poses lend the images a sense of familiarity while the cropping and enlargement call attention to incongruities in the subjects--evidenced by the artist's father, who stares or squints out of the photograph and does not make eye-contact with the camera as his fellow subjects smile amiably.  Like the rest of the show, the viewer is left to discern whether this image is disconcerting, endearing, or both.  (Pictured above: Untitled, 1971/2009).

Lyon's images of her daughter reveal the artist's eye to be distant yet watchful as she observes her transition from childhood to adolescence: the adolescent's neat hair baubles and girlish frocks suggest childhood while her wearied look evokes the exhaution of one vulerable to the uncertainty and burdens of life.  (Pictured above: Untitled, 2009).

Though the concept of this exhibition is decidedly personal, the coming of age and nostalgic themes render the images relevant to all. Indeed, Lyons arguably depersonalizes the images of her daughter by partially covering her face and capturing her in moments where she does not seem to be aware of the camera. The adolescent's budding femininity and increasing (self) awareness of the world in which she is growing increasingly independent strikes a chord of familiarity.  The image of the carnival swing ride reminds one not only of childhood pleasures but of a place where one may have gone on a first date or noticed for the first time, a seedy ride operator ogling young women as they walk by.  The girl's joyless stare at her birthday cake not only evokes the oft apathetic attitude toward birthdays in adulthood (...perhaps the birthday cake/ candles can be understood as a kind of memento mori?) but also the confusion and disavowal that comes with the increasing self-awareness of adolescence.  In this way Lyon's images are wistful--one feels a sense of sadness or longing for something, an innocence, that is rapidly giving way to something else, an unwritten chapter in this family narrative that leaves one anxious in expectation. (Pictured above: Untitled, 2009). 

Lisea Lyon's Lineage opens on Saturday at Marx & Zavattero (77 Geary, 2nd floor) 4-6 PM.