In “Something About Love,’’ McPhee’s new show at Carroll and Sons, she follows her own daughter, Isobel, into her teens, and occasionally shoots other family members. The artist has concocted a visual ambrosia of wild hues, fervid blossoms, and pouty lips. Each piece is collaborative, representing both the artist’s perspective and her subject’s projection, shifting even within one work; each is a montage.
Isobel poses amid flowers and floral tablecloths and shower curtains. The blossoms are an age-old metaphor for youth. The prints, though, speak of artifice - the conjuring that goes into making art, and into crafting a persona, especially when you’re an adolescent.
There’s a languid, self-possessed quality to Isobel’s liquid blue gaze; she knows she is being watched. In works such as “Eleven (Hydrangeas),’’ she engages, eyes closed, then opened, aware of the model’s power. “Ten (Dill)’’ presents a striking contrast. In it, Isobel’s 10-year-old cousin stands amid green stalks and translucent shower curtains. In one frame, she looks out beyond the viewer. In the second, her eyes confront us. She does not flirt or beckon. Where Isobel is in constant give-and-take with the camera (and the viewer), Dill appears to call the shots. The dreamy “Thirteen and Nine’’ is a grid of images shot in a turquoise swimming pool, with flowers floating on the surface. A blue tarp and a patterned tablecloth twist in the water.
In many frames, Isobel reclines against the tarp, eyes closed, draped in blossoms. Isobel’s cousins appear here and there. The bright color and winking light, the flowers, the gravity-free drifting, all add up to a hallucination pulpy with sentiment and possibility. If the works in this show sometimes feel over the top, well, that reflects the inner life of a 13-year-old girl.
