Becoming Queen Lauren Fensterstock and Anne Boleyn at Aucocisco BY CHRIS THOMPSON

It is impossible to look at the stunning mid-1530s portrait of Anne Boleyn and not see the pearl choker round her neck as the line that would soon be a swordsman’s mark.

Where her husband Henry VIII showed his greatest tenderness toward her was in his willingness to break convention and let her be beheaded not by axe, which horrified her, but by sword. This change was more than a trifling one; though there were plenty in England who could have done a quick, clean job with an axe, there was not a one who could assure a practiced professionalism with this more elegant instrument. So two swordsmen had to be especially imported from France to see it done properly, and to see that she was at least done this measure of justice.

Boleyn hadn’t known the charges that awaited her until she arrived at court to face them. Five counts of adultery, including one with her own brother, and none of them substantiated. The court found her guilty and sentenced her to die — either to burn at the stake or be decapitated. The choice fell to Henry. He would marry her lady in waiting, Jane Seymour, a week and a half after Boleyn’s beheading.

From her portrait’s glistening string of pearls there hangs a pendant in the shape of the letter "B," with a mixture of pomp and restraint that is unmistakably hers.

One of the walls of Lauren Fensterstock’s show at the Aucocisco Gallery is covered by 32 small studies of this and other versions of Boleyn’s monogram meshed with the artist’s own initials. Fensterstock’s sources range from Boleyn’s jewelry to her bedroom furniture. In "Study of our Initials Intertwined #20," Fensterstock has lovingly redrawn the famous "B" pendant, however, in her drawing, rather than hanging from the chain of pearls as it does in the 16th-century portrait, the pearls are threaded directly through the top of the letter in an amorous haste. Against the sturdy firm curves of Boleyn’s "B," the "L" in Lauren traces a sinewy sweep, winding its way through its holes and locking it up tight as a newer Laocoon.

"Study of Our Initials Intertwined #5" is a field of faint script, practice attempts at a pairing of the graceful "L" with an angular "A" that reflects 16th-century style at a distance. Of this collection of efforts three were sufficiently on target to yield a second stage, and so have been developed into painted versions of the gold pendant that would symbolize Fensterstock and Boleyn’s transhistorical union.

The wall adjacent to this is also covered with studies, though these are unframed, hung not in a grid but in a kind of collage, pinned to the wall and left to flutter as viewers pass. A large sepia ink drawing entitled "Letter" traces each word in an enlarged version of one of Boleyn’s letters. Starting from the beginning, Fensterstock has gone through and filled in the letters of her own first name in their order of occurrence ("l," "a," "u," etc.) so that out of Boleyn’s syntax another order — one that is the artist’s own and is yet oddly all the more Boleyn’s for having been coaxed out of her own hand — emerges to chant "lauren" thrice.

A drawing nearby consists of dozens of tries at matching Anne Boleyn’s signature. If Fensterstock could train her hand to produce Boleyn’s inimitable script, so that the movement of her hand over the page might become the perfect echo, centuries later, of the rhythms of Boleyn’s body, could the movements become seamless? And if so, whose would be whose?

Cutting a path across the wall are 11 meticulous studies of the collars of Boleyn’s gowns and those of other women close to her: Mary Queen of Scots, another queen executed following Boleyn’s precedent, and Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth, who would one day rule England and who would keep her mother’s memory by making the pearls that Boleyn loved part of her personal symbology.

Each of these collars is drawn absent the flesh that gives the fabric’s form volume and heft. In a confident and delicate hand Fensterstock renders the lilt of the lace ruffs, the sheen of satin, the texture of gold edging and the weight of velvet; the studies facilitate the capture of a sequence of historical personae, a passage of queens whose power resonates even in representations of their attire.

Composer John Cage invented the term "recerebration" to describe the process of meshing another’s thinking with one’s own. He coined it in reference to his friend Marcel Duchamp, the great avant-gardiste with whom Cage developed an increasingly intimate relationship during the last years of Duchamp’s life. So crucial was Duchamp’s thinking to his own that Cage, in his own words, recerebrated Duchamp in order to become a Duchamp unto himself.

The entire Aucocisco show consists of work that has unfolded from Fensterstock’s research into Boleyn’s life, a project that shares much with Cage’s practice of recerebration but perhaps pushes it a step further in that it probes the possibility of inventing a material skin for two to share. Each object or series of them is legible as a kind of scripting of an encounter with facets of Boleyn’s persona, an experimental intimacy with a woman rendered all but inaccessible by the circumstances of history. Says Fensterstock: "So little is known about her. Her enemies were able to eradicate her memory by eradicating her objects, very few of which have survived. As a maker of objects, I find that relationship fascinating."

"Mistaken Identity 3: This Is Not My Anne Boleyn," a Renaissance neck ruff reconstructed as a lamellar ring of frosted butterfly wings, itself becomes a fascinating way to track the complexity of Fensterstock’s engagement with the phenomenon of Boleyn’s disincarnation from the historical record. A more safe and simplistic practice of commemoration would stage an effort to reconstruct details of and artifacts from Boleyn’s life. Fensterstock’s practice is something quite different. Her work conjures up Boleyn’s immaterial presence through the stuff of everyday objects — like "What Happens, 1, 2 and 3," a series of jewel-studded sweet potatoes left slowly to rot, and "Falsies," a pair of false eyelashes constructed from butterfly heads — and does so with a calculated and compassionate combination of cruelty and sensitivity.

The work refuses to arrive at understanding, but moves with a rigor that lets it arrive as something more provocative. Boleyn’s identity remains mistaken, but the mistakes become more powerful and suggestive of what it means to inhabit the space of intimacy; the Boleyn that Fensterstock finds is never hers, but always something and someone else. And so her work, a body of objects whose properties and whose charge make it possible to talk about an erotics of inquiry, moves between the respectful distance of a professional historian and the audacious forwardness of a jilted lover.

She is uninterested in coming to an understanding of this woman — who, like anyone, could never be reduced to and managed by another’s understanding. Instead she invents a way of being in love with her, and takes the risks that any love worthy of the name has to bear. This has demanded the invention of a shared space on the far side of the decisive threshold that only her willingness to be haunted by Boleyn permitted her to cross.

Chris Thompson can be reached at xxtopher@hotmail.com

"Lauren Fensterstock: Dearest" shows at Aucocisco Gallery March 30 through April 23. Call (207) 775-2227. Opening reception April 1 from 5 to 8 p.m.