"We easily make distinctions between cruelties perpetuated by our species and those caused by other agents of ‘nature,'" begins the heavy artist statement of Alice Leora Briggs, whose equally intense work is currently on display at MCC's Mercer Gallery. Her art is as bewildering as it is beautiful, and is born of an obsession with death and definitions. The artist continues: "We argue that our violence is self-consciously different, better or worse than the sometimes catastrophic consequences of gravity or weather," but in arguing that "the human brain is part of nature," she refuses to "make distinctions between the effects of politics and wind; between war and a hurricane." Briggs' work is a collection of masterfully rendered portraits of human history that are consistent, if discomfiting, in their moral ambiguity.

The 20 works on display are accompanied by an exhibition book with more examples of her art. Briggs employs a beyond-impressive sgraffito ("scratchboard" to us) technique, by beginning with a dark surface and scratching it away to reveal a white layer beneath. The marks vary in thickness, direction, and proximity, to create complex images of contours, textures, and more depth of field than I previously believed possible for this medium. By essentially working backward, Briggs' haunting scenes are made by making negative marks, which reveal the light. The same can be said for the subject matter: it's tragic and disturbing, and she argues that these moments define our gratitude of life's goodness.

The scenes are technically amazing; she's scratched out the believable texture of cloth, metal, skin, smoke, and brick. But what do the carefully laid hatch marks add up to? Realms of reality and memory combine in seeming non-sequiturs, where an image of casual dining flows into a war-torn city scene; lovers undress with their backs turned to a neighboring building engulfed in flames; and ancient and modern scenes coexist, with the common themes of bearing witness to horror.

Briggs takes a detailed, glaring look at humanity, but doesn't ask for it to explain itself. In her statement, she quotes Derek Walcott's 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history." Her work evokes fear not only of death, but of the pain and destruction we inflict upon each other, whether from various medical procedures, or the unexpected attack in the night. "Knife" is no more than a deep darkness broken by hands clutching a blade as if prepared to stab downward.

Piece after piece, the works reveal our struggle to survive and improve our lot, which at times has involved some morality-straining choices. "Experiment II" reveals an animal being tested upon, strapped down and hooked up to what can be fairly called torture devices. We take from nature just as nature takes from nature. The difference lies in our ability to abstract, to remember, and we are made uncomfortable by this weight. We empathize with suffering.

Not every meaning is clear. "It was a Mistake" mirrors the headline (from 1987, about Reagan's Iran-Contra Affair) on the Chicago Sun-Times paper on a table also littered with cigarette packs, food, money, and bottles. The front right corner is taken up by a young woman with her head thrown back in an expression of discovery or mid-swoon. In the dim background we perceive a wreck of a house, with heaps of trash and broken furniture. Back in the top left corner, a sinister, grinning woman in an apron gestures "c'mere."

"Transfusion II" is a painful portrait of sacrifice: a tiny, diapered baby with medical apparatus covering its face and a sewn up chest lies across the foreground, a doctor's hands holding what appears to be a bone marrow extractor over a figure in background who is straining to look at the child. The robed medics and adult are lifted from antiquity, while the foreground is a modern hospital scene.

The last four works in the show are smaller, and framed with postage-stamp crenulations. "Levanton" (Spanish for "lift" or "kidnapping") has a decorative border, in which a pair of fish-tailed horses lead the chariot of a king, who is cheerfully lifting a trident. The antiquated imagery takes a new meaning when the border is read: "You are going about your business and suddenly men with guns come and you go with them. Sometimes you return as a corpse, and this of course, is a blessing...usually you never come back."

Toward the end of her artist statement, Briggs waxes candid: "I think sometimes that explanations for making art are a sham. I do it for myself because I can't help it. There's a horrific hole in the world and some people see it, some people do not. If you do, you try your best to fill it with something that you hope will make a seamless patch."

My favorite piece is not on the wall, but in the exhibition book. In "Departing Memory" the interior of a restaurant is shown, and the viewer is up close and intimate with a small table at which two men are immersed in their drinks and discussion. A woman, surrounded by a space of darkness, is caught up in a private reverie, made visible as a grotesque corpse whose head appears to be lying on the table. "In my work I always come back to death and other forms of loss that I know intimately," ends Briggs' statement. "I make what I make to remind myself over and over that at least for now I have the pleasure of breathing."

The Curious, the Ignorant, and the Idle

By Alice Leora Briggs

Through May 1

Mercer Gallery, MCC, 1000 E Henrietta Rd

292-2021, monroecc.edu/depts/vapa/mercer

Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Tuesday, Thursday 10 a.m.-7 p.m.