Christopher St. John at Harrington-Brown, Memphis, TN

(What follows is Carol Knowles review of Chris St. John's show in Memphis.  Chris is formerly of Taos and showed at the late, great Sagefarm Contemporary.)

Beautiful Creatures

Christopher St. John's passionately painted, endlessly inventive exhibition "Icarus Transformed" at Harrington Brown re-envisions the Greek myth in which a boy fails to heed his father's warning, flies too close to the sun, melts his wax-and-feather wings, falls into the sea, and drowns. Instead of being doomed by hubris, St. John's protagonists — feminine versions of Icarus — defy their limitations, spread their wings/arms/fins/paws, and attempt to soar again and again and again.

Many of St. John's creatures, as in A Strange Angel, survive the fall but have not quite worked out all the kinks. This bald, baby-faced angel with one white and one red wing, bright-pink genitalia, and a huge left arm (sprouting blue fur and industrial-grade fingernails) looks out at us with an ecstatic or perhaps maniacal smile.

In what looks like natural selection at warp speed, St. John's oils on panel and more than 300 drawings mix and match seemingly endless permutations of species that stretch like pulled taffy in Melt the Wax, swell to the point of bursting in Severing Point, and flow like founts of blood in The Filter.

Naked except for lush pubic hair and with heads that look like lampshades joined at the cheek, two Icaruses sing in unison in Paper Dolls Sing Your Praise. Their wings have morphed into multiple and very full teets. Their foreheads sprout horns like a unicorn, another mythic creature noted for its beauty, purity, and faithfulness. Unashamed, uncensored, unabashedly inventive and alive, Paper Dolls, like all St. John's creatures, suggest the most fatal flaw (and surest prescription for defeat), instead of hubris, is failure of the imagination.

- Carol Knowles, Memphis Flyer, April 29, 2010