“It’s Not You, It’s Me.”
Bridget Sue Lambert puts a fresh spin on the trendy break-up cliché with her oblique shots of — and shots at — romance in ruins.
Uniting digital pigment prints with animated videos, Lambert’s new solo show debuts Friday at Hillyer Art Place, a Dupont Circle haven opened last spring by the nonprofit International Arts and Artists.
For her analysis of the game of love, in which allies often become adversaries, Lambert poses train set figures in suspenseful encounters within diorama-like displays. Barely an inch tall, the primary-colored figures appear larger — andready for action — as the artist plays with the scale and selectively blurs city backdrops and companions. Which suggests a soothing fantasy: making that significant other insignificant at the touch of a button.
Other scenes are set in a dollhouse intricately crafted by Lambert’s grandfather 35 years ago. “The rooms hint at what went wrong between the people who used to live in this house” explains the longtime D.C. artist, who’s intrigued by “How people deal with breaking up, the after-effects of a relationship gone bad.”
One video, “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” conveys a love-victim’s woozy response to a message embroidered on a shag rug: “Someday you’ll understand.”
Inspiration came from experience and self-help books that struck Lambert as more humorous than helpful. Then again, laughter is the best medicine.
“I’ll buy six at a time, and the [bookstore] cashier will ask, ‘Are you OK?’” The artwork allays such concerns, mediating pangs of angst and pity with flashes of insight: why obsess about lost love when there are other toy figurines in the sea?
Does she still have feelings? Should you rotate three men at a time? Need some space? Here’s one place to find it, complete with some sobering — and amusing — reflections.
IF YOU GO
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Bridget Sue Lambert:
On view January 12 – February 16
International Arts and Artists
9 Hillyer Court NW, 2nd floor
202-338-0680
artsandartists.org/artspace.htm
