Eve Biddle: I have time for death and rebirth,’ at Geary Contemporary

 This past summer, I was fortunate enough to visit Knossos and Heraklion, and get a first-hand view of the remnants of ancient Cretan Minoan civilization, where the Snake Goddess was central to the religious practices of this matriarchal society. Baring their breasts and holding a writhing snake in each hand, these sacred ceramic figurines are just as formidable now as they must have been in and around 1500 B.C. when they were made. In her recent works, Eve Biddle focuses on snake imagery that embraces the past by means of the formal conventions of depicting the serpent—in deference its long and complex iconography. She also invites new associations for the sometimes feared, often benign, but always irrepressible snake.

The exhibition I have time for death and rebirth reexamines the mystical realm of serpentine images that has coursed through Western culture for millennia. On view are a dozen relief sculptures of large snakes in ceramic, 2-D snake images on silk, glazed ceramics, plus mirror cut-out reliefs, and works on paper. Also featured are silkscreened, photo-based images of plants and flowers on oval panels that the artist refers to as “portals.” Co-founder of the Wassaic Project, a Hudson Valley art education center, Biddle is never didactic in her artwork, and the photo-based images of nature provide a subtle context for the snakes rather than a distraction.    

In her artful 2005 book Snake, author Drake Stutesman discusses the importance of the snake as being at the “core of art,” and the serpentine S-line as the “quintessence of aesthetics.” The snake is “key to the unknown, initiator of creativity (life) and a leader from one era (time zone) to another,” she writes. In this exhibition, Biddle seems to concur in the way her works often appear as ancient artifacts, and, as mentioned in a press statement, she uses the image of the snake symbolically as a metaphor for regeneration and resilience. Ultimately, Biddle, through her art, restores to the snake a sense of dignity and underscores its often overlooked cultural and environmental importance. —David Ebony