Changing Faces

Frosted Face? That's GRRRRREAT!

However, Tony the Tiger isn't an art critic and the painter isn't named Kellogg.

But the face? Yup, it's frosted. And the artist is no flake.

"I put food directly on women's faces to explore the concept of women's bodies and their vulnerability to their bodies," says Wendy Kveck, the artist responsible for "The Look That Makes You Happy," a mixed-media exhibit on display through Aug. 8 at the Winchester Center Gallery.

"It's not just cutting skin or decorating yourself, but also the idea of women as the consumer and also the consumed in images. It's a literal metaphor for that."

A woman in prayer surrounded by pieces of sliced pork. Another in a food mask wielding an aluminum foil dagger. Another with white paint splotches, or maybe it's egg whites -- oh wait, that's the frosting -- nearly obscuring her face behind asymmetrical shapes. Digital prints. Paintings of abstraction crossed with realism and punctuated by collages. A video monitor of models strutting, slinking and sexing up the screen, heads garnished in morsels and slabs of colorful edibles.

Delicious and disturbing, Kveck's images make an artist's point while challenging viewer perceptions.

"I'm interested that as a culture, we are so steeped in the idea of celebrity," Kveck says on a walking tour of her work, pausing at the video that, with silent, slo-mo sensuality, follows female posers in food-draped faces and alluring outfits turning, twirling, pouting and preening as if bait for a paparazzi feeding frenzy. It's a surreal fever dream of a vapid E! channel, red-carpet Oscar/Emmy/Grammy/Whatever preshow, only minus the Versace frocks, squealing fans, tedious fawning and pointless palaver.

As they seduce the camera, the mysterious ladies seem simultaneously to flirt and elude its gaze.

"It's not only achieving that kind of glamour and beauty and status, but also the kind of celebrity you see now, like OK! magazine and US Weekly trying to show us that the stars are just like us" -- Eek! Celebs Caught Without Makeup! -- "and we're really attracted to that, the idea that they have this human side as well," she says.

"I was asking models to mimic some of those poses that celebrities make for photo ops. I edited it and slowed it down at things that I thought were really elegant to things that are awkward and show vulnerability, standing around trying to figure out what to do next."

A transplanted Las Vegan originally from the Chicago suburbs, Kveck earned her master's degree in fine arts last year from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where faculty members were impressed.

"People have been depicting beauty in painting for a really long time, and there's a contemporary perspective in her work that uses the grotesque to define what we consider beauty, and she does it in a dynamic way," says Stephen Hendee, a professor in UNLV's MFA program, who also appreciates her multimedia approach. "She made it a challenge for herself to successfully connect them, and it's a fascinating way of looking at the subject."

Kveck also was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant and had her work displayed in Texas, New York and Chicago, showcasing her socially relevant side.

"This show is exploring the idea of our social selves and how women present themselves, and celebrities wind up being an exaggeration of that," she says.

Social encounters would be far freakier -- and more fascinating -- if they resembled Kveck's creations. Underscoring the show-bizzy vibe, the video vamping precedes a droopy formation of drapes, the royal-purple cloth angled into an archway over cascading folds of gold fabric suggesting a backstage entrance, but somewhat shabby and devoid of pop-culture pizzazz. Perhaps it's commenting on the ordinary core of seemingly extraordinary celebrities.

Or not.

In a depiction that departs from the food theme, one transparent mask is a stringy collection of trinkets, beads and necklaces crisscrossing a female face, as if jewelry donned for a night of elegant partying doubled as the method of hiding one's true character during the rituals of socializing.

Or not.

"I like that people can move between different ideas," Kveck says about reactions to her provocative images. "I think there are a lot of layers, so I'm interested in it being open. Even though they're all women, I hope that the work is accessible to men, too."

Still, the show is female-centric and enhanced by its mixed-media elements, strips of material coalescing into collages in some artwork, while dazzling swirls of color in thick, bulbous clumps of paint protrude from other canvases, lending dimension to the intriguing images. While making specific points on some pieces, Kveck attributes others to that unknowable surge of creative energy that eludes explanation, communicating viscerally, not verbally.

It might not easily register in the mind -- say, the cryptically titled "Stand Up (Into the Morning Hours with the Help of Nonstop Beats and Endless Cocktails)," a woman's detail-free face swathed in color -- but it resonates in the gut. Likewise for the interpretive "I Am Not a Machine" -- in which a woman stares as if in both resignation and defiance of demands made of her -- and the aforementioned "Meat Prayer," in which pieces of pork frame a prayerful woman.

"They're composites, celebrity images and fashion, making it into something new," Kveck says. "I'm interested in uncovering that rawness on the canvas, from the meat to the frosting on the face."

Flaky? GRRRRREAT? You decide.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.