Diorama delight; Living Arts
Cate McQuaid
Thursday, September 17, 1998

Dioramas play with us. These three-dimensional narratives rise off the wall, against the logic of the picture plane. Good dioramas delight the viewer in their improbable and elaborate construction as well as in their storytelling. Jerry Williams and Tom Duncan have dioramas up now at the Genovese/Sullivan Gallery. Duncan's are dark and war-plagued; Williams's pieces are comic-book bright and sharp in their view of human nature.

Duncan shares Williams's interest in the fantastic, but his work is heavy with the scars and ironies of war - particularly World War II. In one series of paper-doll-type images of women getting dressed, he garbs a Japanese schoolgirl, Joan of Arc, and a Nazi. They each progress from the plain innocence of nudity through a layer of telling undergarments - the schoolgirl bound in leather; the Nazi woman vamping in black lingerie - to the uniform they present to the world. In "At Waverly Station," a boy in a train station peers into a fantastic diorama depicting Nazi atrocities. The pairing of innocence and menace will make you shiver.

Genovese/Sullivan will be open through the weekend to celebrate South End Open Studios.