If you visit the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's minimalist space this month, you're probably not expecting an encounter with nature, "red in tooth and claw." But that's what Malia Jensen's always fascinating and compelling new exhibition, "Animalia," delivers -- at least in part.
Next to an 8-foot-tall beaver made out of horizontal sheets of plywood and among seven other sculptures of mating ceramic ladybugs, contemplative fiberglass foxes and lounging birds made out of cow dung, looms a 7-foot-tall walnut tree trunk. Neatly plumed and hilariously retrofitted with electrical wires and sockets, the once magnificent hunk of wood now emanates only an unnatural, sepia-colored glow.
One could rightly interpret the sculpture, called "Spring Tree," as the sum of its disparate parts: nature and industry in a quirky, humorous embrace that touches on our region's ambivalence about them on the cusp of a new century. ut the halogenically bright-and-flashing sculpture is a deeper cultural puzzle, a metaphor that opens the door on a host of other impulses that have nothing to do with sacred forests or the desire of the big, bad city.
