Welcome to the Freak Parade: Latest exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art
“Please clear a simple path,” for Thomas Woodruff’s Freak Parade. So goes the opening line of Woodruff’s hauntingly beautiful five-year masterpiece, currently on display at the Haggerty Museum of Art.
Though internationally-renowned for his elegiac series work, Woodruff still gamely appeared at Haggerty for Freak Parade’s opening Jan. 27, outfitted in red velvet and flash right down to his toes — perfect for a parade Grand Marshall.
“There’s a hint of color on the horizon, and it’s coming our way.” Bright reds and yellows jump out at the viewer against a backdrop of midnight black for a dramatic, eerie effect. Woodruff softens the edges of the ethereal images he presents, making their garish deformities appear as innocent quirks.
Carefully chosen poetic puns and wonderings accompany each painting but are purposefully kept off center stage with a half-erased chalkboard effect. It’s here that Woodruff shows his dark sense of humor and witty way with words, playing on metaphors and personal memories, using archaic vocabulary and presenting tongue-in-cheek questions to the viewer.
“Be prepared for attraction and revulsion and a quickened pulse (I know I’m quite giddy).”
Woodruff prances 32 grotesque creatures before us, from Anatomy Boy — complete with anatomy textbook dissection view — to an eight-breasted baton twirler, a leopard with skin lesions and a crusty-eyed dancer with amputated feet. He goes beyond the typical circus freak show favorites, inventing beasts such as the blood-sucking hummingbird.
He based many of the freaks on memories and friends, honoring the dead with a lettuce man and a flower obelisk, exorcising his demons over a boy he bullied as a child and using the image of a friend’s skin deformity for inspiration.
Carrots, pink carnations, heart-shaped flowers, coral branches and spider webs are present throughout the parade, and the color palette remains fairly constant in yellows and pinks, with hints of green and gold. Glitter and gemstones accent each piece, adding to the magical curiosity of the creatures. Chains and ribbons loosely link three and four pieces together in groups.
“Clomping, slithering, prancing, limping, spectacularly ulcerated,” it’s impossible to look away from these pieces. Each one has an astounding array of activity, highlighted by winding words of introduction, all twirled into a soft, twinkling night. Beautiful from afar, the beasts become uglier the more you find out about them.
The beautiful wide-eyed ballerina is actually dancing on stumps where her feet used to be, while her eyes are crusted over with mucus, if you look properly. Those cute little rabbits have evil red eyes and unnaturally long necks. Up close, that blushing plump flower girl has a red moustache.
Woodruff draws viewers in with brightness and beauty, allowing them to appreciate the freaks instead of instantly loathing them. Looking at Woodruff, with his mullet hair and not an inch of skin left un-tattooed, I can’t help but think he is portraying himself and his own feelings of freakishness, at least in society’s eyes.
“This parade is my sprawling celebration of all things aberrant.” This is Woodruff’s comment on society’s homogenization. The bland, WASP parades of old are gone with his inspired creations. No longer are fire trucks and displays of power the highlight of a parade. Now, unicorns with gender identity issues and woodpecker epitaphs are the norm.
Woodruff has outdone himself with this series. He used the same creepy attraction as in his “Solar System” of cosmic two-faced optical illusions, combined with the bright fantastical beauty of works like “Diviner.” His patient devotion to detail and wild imagination have earned him an outstanding series.
The only drawback about the parade was that it went on a little too long. With so many things to look at in all 32 paintings, they take a long time to examine. Nevertheless, each is a masterpiece of the bizarre.
So take the time to visit the Haggerty, stand back, and watch in awe as Thomas Woodruff’s Freak Parade limps grimly by through April 18. You’ll never attend a local parade again.
Tags: art, circus, Freak Parade, Haggerty Museum of Art, painting, Thomas Woodruff
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