Contradictions of war surface in `Tour of Duty'
by Mary Sherman
Boston Herald; Boston, Mass.; Aug 19, 2001;
Copyright Boston Herald Library Aug 19, 2001
For more than a decade, Ken Hruby has been delving into the dark recesses of America's guilt - the guilt ofsending young men to an undeclared war and the guilt of treating them like pariahs afterward. Ever since the Vietnam War, some Americans are uncomfortable with the military. They feel shame over the military's ignoble loss and its involvement in a war that many didn't believe was America's to fight. But what about those who fought? Those whose lottery numbers came up? Those who bravely felt it was theright thing to do?
Ken Hruby is one of them. In "Tour of Duty: Sculpture by Ken Hruby," a 15-year survey of Hruby's art at theCape Ann Historical Museum, the artist displays an ability to create work that is as insightful as it is disturbing, as humorous as it is beautiful and as contradictory as war itself. Hruby makes sculptures and installations that force us to confront the realities of war.
Using prostheses, he creates disturbing hybrid pieces and gives them such titles as "Uneasy Crown" and "Uneasy Urn." "Juggernaut" consists of a multitude of Army boots that Hruby nailed to a large wheel, to suggest a blind and bodyless army of men crushing all that's in front of them. Similarly, "Reminiscences" gathers stacks of shoes and insoles, topped with a pair of boots without laces. "Minefields of Memory" comprises old crutches, strung like marionettes and set to a jerky motor, to poignantly mimic the gait of their owners.
A former Army brat and West Point graduate with 21 years of military service, including tours of duty in Korea and Vietnam, Hruby knows his material intimately. However, the work is never so personal as to alienate its audiences. Combat and war are artistic images as old as the first marks found on the Caves of Lascaux. Hruby updates them with the use of welded steel and technology, including video and motion sensors. What makes his work so powerful, though, is its portrayal of humanity; specifically, humanity's ability to dance at one moment - as suggested by the dance steps on the floor in "Fix Bayonets, Let's Dance" - and to go off to battle the next. "Free Fall," with its use of such romantic music as Satie's, exposes the realization that a parachute drop can be as mesmerizingly beautiful as it can be deadly. Still, the camaraderie of the men is what helps to make it all tolerable; this is conveyed not only in the large-scale black and white pictures interspersed throughout the show, but also, more indirectly, through Hruby's artistic homage to his fellow soldiers.
Yet what mars all of this fine work is the show's insistence on heavy-handed labels, which so thoroughly explain all the pieces that they are turned into illustrations. Likewise, the promotional video at the show's beginning makes me wonder why Hruby or the institution thought it was necessary to extol the artist's abilities, instead of letting viewers come to their own conclusions. All this suggests a strange insecurity about the work, which is hardly necessary and, frankly, an annoying burden. "Tour of Duty: Sculpture by Ken Hruby" at the Cape Ann Historical Museum, through Oct. 20.