Monday, October 27, 2008

The Human Animal Project, Trustman Art Gallery

Paul Roux has organized an exhibition at the Simmons Trustman Gallery. His thesis is that humans are beasts and have not evolved. “Sometimes it seems as though we haven't evolved at all,” writes Roux. The pieces are generally beautiful and feed his thesis of general complaint over the state of society and its relation to the world. I found the thesis too broad and the artwork too broad as well. No specific point was concluded – because one certainly can’t prove that humans haven’t evolved.

Cathy McLaurin From the series Making Nice (2008)
A large brown paper was placed on the wall with hand-printed white designs and dolls with animal masks that cover one of each their eyes. It is a critique of the red-wagon pulling, bob haircut American Dream child. She makes us examine the dream child in a frightening context and when we realize that it increases the unease, we break down our constructed idea about children (of course, it doesn’t happen as fast as all that, but this is the process). The stuffed animal masks also comment on the concept of children as a novelty or a hobby. Placing toy heads on their faces, specifically that block one of their eyes, dehumanizes the children to the degree that they look like toys. This is a criticism of bourgeoisie approach to child rearing.
The curator relates this piece to an alternative dimension where we can escape from what he sees as a harsh world. “Part of me finds solace in a world where such beings roam free” Roux writes in his curatorial statement. The issue is that these creatures are very clearly terrifying. McLauren directly used the aesthetic of Donnie Darko (a film in which there is a horror figure with a bunny mask on naked Frank), which evokes fear and discomfort, not freedom of imagination, let alone escape. Then a little too much of an effort to theoretically analyze this piece peaks. “These beings are just as real as our perceptions of any living breathing thing, as real as Barney, Mickey Mouse, history, the bible,” He is not claiming that these icons are real but that they are constructed, just as these scary bunny creatures are constructed. Of course Barney is a construction. This reading does nothing for us besides makes Roux sound like he went to Graduate School.

Jason Lazarus’s Oprah Memorial (2006) A photograph of a sign outside of Oprah’s studio with flowers on it and a gritty water tower juxtaposed behind. The artists explained his project as “creating a memorial asks witnesses to consider the legacy of a cultural phenomenon while they are still alive.” This is a very basic point. Yes, it’s odd that we are obsessed with Oprah. However, juxtaposition is an overdone, cheap way to prove this point. The point is not interesting either. Everybody knows about the cult of the celebrity. This piece is not subtle or thrilling in the least. The only options the viewer is offered are right or wrong, both of which are incredibly boring and will not help our understanding of the world we exist in as the complex, multifaceted reality it is turning out to be.

Hiroko Kitchu’s piece is part of a performance piece she’s currently working on called Bee-vah, a critique the american dream. Drawings of denchers are gridded on the wall with prose underneath each drawing. It discusses standards of living that rise proportionally to need and examines the arbitrary standards like white teeth which are invented when needs are met and the way that people are compelled to worry regardless. “I had no accomplishments except surviving but that wasn’t enough in the community I grew up in because everyone is doing it. So I wasn’t prepared for America where everybody is glowing with good teeth and good clothes and good food.”, she writes about her immigration experience. One dencher caption refers to “straight teeth and crooked morals”. She raises criticism of American superficiality, but it only amounts to complaining. This piece did not contain a single shred of advice or constructive criticism. We already know it is a problem, and no, just because we admit we have a problem does not mean we want to fix it. “America is dumb, like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you that is aggressive”. She closes with “Americans have no identity but they do have wonderful teeth.”

This show amounts to some very beautiful complaining; no new problems that we haven’t seen addressed before and zero constructive ideas. The idea that humans haven’t evolved at all and that greed is an animal impulse are both silly concepts. “On the sixth day, greed gave birth to blind pursuit in the western colonial mould that has opened the door for a cultural and human void” Roux writes in his curatorial statement. Greed, however, comes along with consciousness. To see it as an animalistic drive ignores the requirement of consciousness in order to desire more than one needs. No animal accumulates food for the hell of it. Only conscious humans. This criticism of human behavior is very passé. Everybody knows it’s a catastrophe. It is a waste of time to look at art about it. Morbid exploration is what is needed – art should be providing us with a window into the reasoning or lack there of of the current situation. It should be inducing the consumerist rush that causes so much trouble so we can examine our addiction on a pedestal. The reality will do the work for itself. Human commentary and disapproval pales in comparison to the real monsters we are talking about. Put the monsters on the pedestals. Bring the hedonism into the gallery. Let us feel the vice for ourselves. Show us what we crave out of context, then we will examine it.
Trustman Gallery, October 7th - November 4th, 2008.

Notes From the Underground: 1982-2007, A 25-Year Survey

On the left was Nixon. On the right was Elvis. The middle figure rang several bells. “Is that Jesus or Charles Manson?” I asked Nathan Censullo, director of the Pierre Menard Gallery in Harvard Square. “That’s the artist, Nick Lawrence.”

Nick’s Notes From the Underground: 1982-2007, A 25-Year Survey is comprised of over 100 pieces, packed millimeters apart into the beautiful wood paneled space, making up “really just a sample” of the work Lawrence has produced in the past 25 years.

Thankfully, due to the amount of pieces, his work is organized into succinct series, each with a distinct concept and material makeup. “He really spent a lot of time investigating it crossing different media platforms,” Censullo said of his technical development. This Friday, the Pierre Menard Gallery is opening their doors and uncorking their bottles to facilitate the public’s experience of this crazy gorgeous show with it’s closing celebration.

The Pierre Menard has a classy bohemian vibe. They just opened in 2006 under owner John Wronowski, and Director Nathan Censullo. Often, the gallery has poetry readings and intimate musical events. The closing celebration will be a visually explosive, mentally stimulating and belly satisfying engagement.

Stylistically each series is very different. For the Dali Fetishists out there, The Deep Time: Underground Series is a tantalizing combo of collage, varnish and golem-esque Greek Tragedy references. Conceptually, we are underground – both culturally and literally. The material is impressively successful, considering he used collage to achieve the biomorphic smooth landscapes of the surrealists – known for appearing to be liquid. In Subterraneous (1991), we are brought underground (hence the name). Two disembodied heads look at each other, divided by what look like rock formations. Below them, in what appears to be lower geographical level, is another prehistoric bird painted over a circular map.

For the pulp fetishists, The House Series uses the recognizable five-slab symbol for a house as a border to all sorts of dark intriguing things. It begins with houses exuding very separate personalities through abstract and representational tribal language. Bright Africana colors exude light and often optimism. Triple Decker #2 (1997) is crazy with life. Contrasting abstract forms creates a separate personality for each room. A rounded bioform fills up the bottom room completely while a spiky stacked shape is stuck in the doorway. Spider webs fill the middle ground but become the arms of an ovular scarab thing standing there. A spindly top-heavy bubblehead creature crawls onto the roof. There is unmistakable glee here.
Who knows what happened in the middle of this series to Nick, but the series takes a turn for the naughty. The houses become brothels, indicated by the title addition (Bordello). InHouse Torso (Bordello)the house symbol rounds slightly, becoming vaginal and within the vagina house is a pasted together woman’s body. The lower half is in the style of a negative. This torso – contained within her own holding space –which both female genitalia and homes are, has had her visible genitalia reversed in color – namely made negative. The house (which is a brothel) has made her vagina negative. The housing series closes with Mountain House (1997) when everything is both duotone and abstract with slight clues in the title and the formations as to what the photo originally was (a.k.a mountains).

An extremely visually pleasing but conceptually blurry series is the Nuclear Fission Series. According to the Gallery director, this series is very special to Nick. They are extraordinarily beautiful (providing you’re into gritty stuff like Rauschenberg and Dubuffet). The collage in these takes a step further, including driftwood, straw, thick paint, sometimes carved out of again, and pen and ink drawings on paper with lacquer over them. The drawings look like woodprints, which adds to the almost sculptural works artifact aesthetic.

The Scroll Series is an Africana themed collection. It is done with oil-stick and acrylic on paper. They strike on several levels. First, the setting is always a landscape with native people of different types in the foreground. On the horizon, there is generally an apocalyptic scenario, but all of the coloring is so bright and cheerful that the apocalypse seems fine. Birth of Nile (1987) is one of the most striking pieces in the show. The first thing the eye is drawn to is the male’s hat, a fez with a plant growing out of it. The plant has shower/watering can nozzles instead of flowers. The plant reigns into the dry riverbed where a woman and man are kneeling, the woman waiting and ready to sail a western toy sail boat. The man is holding a drop of water up to his nose to smell it, as if it were a diamond. The apocalyptic background has planes crashing, turtles that look too much like tanks to be ignored patrolling against the horizon. A cannon is pointed at the man. Both of their legs are wrapped in what could be chains or bracelets. Restrained, and in the face of the western imagery enclosing on the horizon, not to mention the chains around their bodies, the woman patiently waits for the river to fill so her boat will float, while the man looks hopeful that the Nile will refill.

A playful art history theme throughout the show helps to remind us that Nick has been a gallery owner for almost 30 years. He is the owner of Freight and Volume Gallery in New York. Bird in Space (1990), a rough abstract bondage-flamenco-type-shape teases the famed Modern Artist Broncos, who made many abstract Birds with that same title. In his Division in Time series Nick pays tribute to the modern master Le Courbet. Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (1862) was the first painting to question linear perspective in painting and the value of the clergy in one blow. The scene is a funeral that the pope and his followers as well as the peasants attend. The peasants look completely disinterested by the Pope, which was taken harshly. The final straw was a dog that belonged to the peasants depicted staring away from the pope – as if he was inconsequential even to the dog. InBurial at Ornans (After Courbet) Lawrence took three images from the original, which are progressive zooms of the dog looking away. His background for the pieces is yellow and red with red blood drops and what could easily be perceived as fecal matter floating in the bio soup behind the detail of Le Courbet’s genius.
His influences pour in through each piece – Paul Klee, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Dubuffet are palpable, along with many more. His medium and his concept make it obvious that Nick has been living and breathing art for most of his life.

The Pierre Menard Gallery, September 25th – November 7th
Closing Reception Friday, November 7th 6-9pm. Artists talk 6-7.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Karsh 100: A Biography in Images.

Anne Havinga, senior curator for the MFA has put together a show attempting to “reveal the humanity with which [Karsh] approached all people”. She is trying, by showing some of his travel photography and private works of family etc… to show the non-iconifying Karsh. Her thesis, unfortunately, was either not adequately proved or is not true. Even Karsh’s pieces of his first wife become ideas of idealized femininity. His lens converts humanity into icons. His travel photography – everywhere from African tribes to a Bishop and his nephew lose their humanity entirely and become timeless symbols. These photos are iconic legacies. The combination of dramatic lighting – which removes the subject from linear time, and the surreal medium of photography makes them far larger than life – life being human.

Yousuf Karsh was a legendary photographer who photographed personalities from different sections of American celebrity society. The exhibit is a fleshed out construction of American cultural identity. Everyone stares out of the photos –Hepburn, Einstein, Eisenhower, JFK and most striking of all – Hemingway. Notice no mention of first names was necessary in this cast list. It was a startling experience. The audience became a part of an impressive tragic legacy – all constructed by Karsh.

The reason this experience was so intense was because Karsh created an American iconography out of ordinary people. He did the Tennessee Williams - you know the one – typewriter, cigarette (in glamorous holder, of course) and an “ever present glass of scotch”, in Karsh’s words. The quintessential play write, mustache and all. But there is no visual definition of a playwright. Karsh made it. He created what we think a playwright is. The power of that is immense. It’s every contemporary (by contemporary, unfortunately for the present theoretical institution, I mean 1970’s) theorist’s wet dream. Not just the chauvinist playwright either. JFK, during his campaign – hands clutched the same way Jesus is often depicted in prayer (fingers interlaced), light shining directly on the his third eye – an identical Christ reference. He’s going to save us – Karsh whispers with this image. Actually, it is not a whisper. It is a direct announcement, and a ballsy one at that. In that photo, he solidified the hope that new presidents hold to our country. The image is not JFK. It is potential president as savior. And even today, given the key words Obama favors, there aren’t many things that get Americans more excited.

Hemingway – the quintessential tortured artist. He stares terrified into the abyss, his eyes black, looking cold and worn by his perpetual pondering. A giant effeminate sweater swells around his throat, making him look all the more pathetic and ruffled. It is disturbing – dejected and too idealistic for reality as his mind was. This photo (as my observations of it are a good illustration) invites projection and application of ideas/emotions. This is because Hemingway has become everything we associate with this stereotype – when Hemingway himself was just a man.

The remarkable thing about Karsh was his ability to not only encompass simple emotions but to define complex separate roles within society visually. The work is stunning.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Rabb Gallery 9.23.2008 – 1.19.09