Lily Ludlow and Allen Cordell, “Sowing Circle”

Sowing Circle

Courtesy Canada Gallery

This show presents works that tease the viewer’s voyeuristic expectations, only to frustrate them. But if the intent was to offer a critique of our propensity to be led around, visually, by the little head instead of the big one, the approach should have been more than half-baked.

On her own, Lily Ludlow offers erotic paintings of stiff nudes entangled in sexual acts. Despite hints of sensuous, Rita Ackerman–esque lines, Ludlow buries her graphite marks under repeated layers, perhaps with the idea of exhausting the erotic content by overworking it. Rather than evoke a jaded vision of a culture overdosing on sexual imagery, however, the finished compositions seem too clean and lacking in psychological nuance.

In Sowing Circle, Ludlow collaborates with Allen Cordell to create a three-channel video projection that features Ackerman along with arty celeb Chloë Sevigny and musician Lizzie Bougatsos. They’re shown together at a dinner party, and separately doing daily routines. The documentary-style footage and domestic settings hint at the vicarious thrill of peering into the private lives of public figures, but wooden acting and baroque camera work get in the way. If the biopic-like sequences had been more engaging, the betrayal of the narrative illusion of intimacy would have greater impact. As it stands, the women are held at extreme psychic distance throughout the video and it is hard to know how to feel—especially about something like the image of Sevigny enthroned on a seat of clouds.