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Scardillo
at
Schroeder Romero |
The group shows are upon us like a swarm of locusts, and
to make matters worse I'm not in a single one. Well, maybe
that's a good thing, since my inability to draw anything
but circles has severely limited my ability to grow creatively.
My therapist suggested that I see a psychiatrist and get
on something other than, well, whiskey and deli coffee.
I'd rather eat nails than go on Paxil, although maybe I'd
stop weeping during these art crawls. My dealer in L.A.
says not to worry and that lyrical abstraction is going
to comeback huge in ten years, and just keep drawing and
painting those circles. So, before I take a therapeutic
break from the art crawl and work on my collection of aesthetic
essays titled "What's real good?" I'll wrangle
with these sprawling, beautiful accidents known as summer
group shows.
Before I take on these unwieldy messes, let me review some
of the shows that came and went since the last crawl. My
personal favorite was Eric Heist's solo show, Leisure
Management Corporation at Schroeder Romero. This
silly indictment of corporate America was brilliantly conceived
and executed with wit and restraint. Using the ultra-bland
interior design of corporate offices as a thematic motif,
Heist actually had to change very little about the blank
walls of the gallery, a desk, a table, a sign on a door
were enough to evoke corporate austerity. What's really
funny and savage about the show are the figures underneath
the furniture. Beneath the reception desk is what looks
like a shrouded woman. Beneath the desk around the corner
might be a man fucking; who or what remains a mystery. Heist
subverts corporate seriousness wickedly; open the maintenance
door and you'll find a disco ball in the reflected darkness.
Heist also has a series of black and white drawings on colored
paper and some from his corporate series, which are good
enough on their own but achieve added resonance in their
surroundings. The whole thing works out as one great, black
comedy.
Rating: 
Leisure Management Corporation went under June 23rd.
Pierogi had a whacky two-person before their summer
group show opened. Brian Dewan's solo exhibit, I-CAN-SEE
Film strips, completely transformed the gallery into
a one room school house. The installation was pretty much
a stage for the odd artist, who apparently stayed in the
space for the run of the show giving these old school beep
and turn film strip shows with lectures. I hadn't seen one
of these things since grade school. I didn't stick around
that long though, the guy was sweating a lot and reminding
me of a weird cousin who still lives at home, despite the
fact he's forty. Still, the whole endeavor was fairly impressive,
but ultimately I couldn't stand the idea of sitting in a
hot classroom watching a slide show about Colonialism. Sorry
Mr. Dewan, I took a hall pass.
Rating:
Jonathan Herder had an impressive show of collaged drawings,
Stampology, in the back that invoked history and
pedagogy parallel to Dewan's performance. Herder uses historical
stamps to create a variety of collages that blend genres
from narrative comics to landscapes. In one collage, Herder
uses the cut-out stamp heads of Lincoln and Washington on
drawn bodies as they wage an absurd ideological battle.
Additionally, Herder draws and collages tiny fragments of
the squares to create mosaic landscapes that are delicate
and beautiful. Herder also uses text and the language of
history in one large drawing that is equal parts U.S History
and Aesthetics. Overall, the show was one of my favorites
for its exquisite formalism and its humorous criticism of
historical reverence. Herder remains skeptical of history,
while Dewan has the energy and bearing of a cheerleader
for the subject matter.
Rating: 
Both shows went on summer break June 23rd.
Let's talk about really bad painting for a minute, since
it came in all shapes and sizes during June. There is an
upside to the rain actually since it might have saved you
from witnessing the tragedy of these three shows. Arnold
Helbling's "Everything Falls Apart Yet Nothing Ever
Does…", Karen Heagle's "Fierce", and
Steve Silver's "Space is the Place" all were mystifyingly
bad. Helbling's abstract leftovers from figurative sources
were absolutely awful in their coloring and phenomenological
excess at Roebling Hall. The extremely plastic looking surfaces
and generic abstract mark making make Gerhard Richter's
abstract paintings look sincere and masterful. Karen Heagle
apparently cannot get enough Karen Klimnick, so she painted
her own bad celebrity paintings, plus she adds some vintage
porn scenes for a stronger post-feminist statement. Ug,
I can't take it, next! Steve Silver's cake paintings at
Plus Ultra took their cue from some source I am not familiar
with and don't care to be after seeing what it inspired
him to create. These paintings look exactly like my undergrad
professor was doing in '94. Laying it on thick and making
very edible looking globs of paint. Silver actually collages
what looks like a bunt cake on top of the globs of icing-like
paint.
You can probably still catch Karen Heagle if you don't believe
they could be that bad, but your going to have to go ask
the other galleries for slides to confirm the badness. All
together you get
, maybe, if you weight it fully clothed and soaking wet.
It's a split decision over at Dam Stuhltrager. Eric
Trosko's spare, dream-like canvases of unusual objects invoke
surrealist dreams. Conjuring everything from science to
sexual desire Trosko makes better paintings through a formal
economy that allows the curious objects to conceptually
transform in the mind. The small canvases all share a clean,
graphic style and a muted, pastel palette. All of them were
untitled, but I was digging on one that reminded me of the
possibility that universe is shaped like a donut and space
might really function like in Asteroids where the ship goes
out the top and reappears on the bottom. For some reason
I can't articulate I liked one of the canvasses that looked
like a hairy, vaginal ice-cream bar. I'll have to buy it
and bring it with me to therapy. I really wish some of Trosko's
playful imagery had spilled into Sheila Ross's home deco,
geometric abstractions. Her formal collages of squares and
rectangles are all made with a variety of faux surfaces
that are pinned together with silver tacks. Unfortunately,
nothing really takes command, neither the formal arrangements
nor the silly, domestic materials.
Rating:
Recent Work is up through August 3rd.
Riviera Gallery had a pretty funny show, Greedy
Gas Guzzlers, of advertising and design inspired works
by Matt Campbell that document the emergence of house sized
domestic utility vehicles. These monstrous machines rendered
in a graphic cartoon style by the artist gleefully romp
across the landscape shielded in the nonsensical language
and double-speak of advertising. Campbell has a good time
sending up soccer moms and macho men with his advertisements
that market the machines security features and play to male
desire. The show verges on intellectual snobbery since its
satirical target has already got conservative middle-Americans
actually thinking about the economic and environmental effects
of their SUV's. The real strength of Campbell's work isn't
conceptual, but in the unrestrained manipulation of so many
commercial languages while maintaining a stylistic thread.
Rating:
Greedy Gas Guzzlers stopped running at the end of June.
So the difficult task of discussing a flood of group shows
remains, and maybe I should concoct some ridiculous theme
to tie all of the disparate shows together to seem like
I'm conceptually and theoretically sophisticated. Or, I
could just admit that I've got a lot of friends in these
shows and want to talk about their work. I think, somehow,
maybe I'll take my cue from the how the curators and galleries
put these shows together.
School is Out, curated by the venerable Michel Auder
at Southfirst, finds the old boy mixing in his old
school friends and some people I've never heard of but am
glad he threw them in. So, sure, he puts in Cindy Sherman,
Alice Neel, and Jeremy Blake in here so I'd walk all the
way down to the gallery, but then you already know their
work. Stop by to see Auder's lesser-known selections like
Coinne Jone's simple ink Jungle Drawings, Sandra
Velllejos's uber doodle, Untitled, that on its mount
looks almost digital or photographic, or Maureen Gallace's
subtle and elegant little landscapes. Mari Eastman's glittery
paintings of pets and a china plate also indicate that someone
was not asleep behind her brush. Otherwise, this is a well-hung
show that proves Auder has an excellent eye, but essentially
avoids any thematic responsibility. Guess that's where the
title comes in.
Rating:
Through August 3rd.
If Auder's show is a little creaky, Blinky, at Foxy
Productions is rife with youthful energy. This buoyant
little show features the work of Cory Arcangel, who gave
a hell of a performance at the opening of Outpost (more
later), and other multimedia artists riffing on techno-geek
culture, therefore I loved it. Arcangel rigs up an old 8-bit
NES to LCD monitors and basically sticks a fork in the thing
to make Mario have abstract dreams. The gesture is beautiful,
watching a computer generated icon have psychedelic dreams.
Apparently Arcangel and BEIGE collaborated to confuse the
NES into reading an altered ROM, but I used to get similar
effects when my NES got old. I guess it's harder than it
looks. Who doesn't love Gumby? The lovable creature is referenced
in the work of the Paper Rad Collective. While there were
other prints and such in the show, they felt more reactive
to technology and somewhat less memorable. I really can't
even recall what they looked like. Despite that, check it
out since Blinky has been extended on weekends through
July 13th.
Rating:
Almost as a counterpoint to Blinky, is Fish Tank
Gallery's show, Marks. This four-person show
claims to deal with "invisible cultural marks and concepts".
Basically, all the artists have some idea in their head
that they have to make visual. That could also be a description
of making any kind of art. Let's make it a bit more specific;
the artists are responding to specific concepts, mainly
technological and pop-cultural. Unlike Blinky, none of the
artists engage technology on its own terms. All of the information
the artists are concerned with is processed through very
traditional means, which ultimately have less to do with
the ideas than arriving at a formal aesthetic. Carrie Pollack's
linear abstraction is appropriated from multiple sources
and reconfigured on paper or canvas to make complex compositions.
Barry Allikas's hard-edged abstraction tries to function
as a metaphor for data streams, but come on, they are rather
generic, symmetrical abstract paintings. Valerio Vevilacqua's
black monochrome canvases claim to have some game-like process,
but are mainly dull. Essentially, I don't think the artists
in this show really address or care about the thematic concept
draped on them, which makes the press release a lot of reassurance
for worried collectors. The only artist in the show that
seems to have anything overt to say through the medium is
Mark Schubert with his inverted Ken and Barbie dolls. The
casts of the empty space inside the hollow dolls resonate
formally and conceptually, although they fall short at conception.
Ken and Barbie must be some of the most popular subjects
for artists concerned with identity.
Rating:
Marks ended its streak June 30th
Cory Arcangel, the engine behind Blinky, also had
a killer performance at the opening of Outpost, curated
by Ada Chisholm at Smack Mellon. A friend of a friend was
in the show, so I was forced to travel to the venerable
DUMBO Gallery for the first time. Arcangel gave a
Powerpoint presentation on some obscure facts surrounding
Eddie Van Halen's soloing techniques while also revealing
his own personal idiosyncrasies. The performance, which
sounded really stupid beforehand worked because Arcangel
was as absorbed in the subject matter as he wanted us to
be, and when it came time to perform, he executed some of
Van Halen's most famous riffs flawlessly. He even pointed
out his bloodly, fingertips. Instead of mocking Arcangel
I was surprised how easily he had accessed unwanted nostalgia
for the 80's and those awful middle school dances and girls
with big hair.
The rest of Outpost was interesting, but as someone
noted, Arcangel's act was hard to follow. His own multimedia
piece playing data patterns seemed boring and needlessly
formal afterwards. Greg Simsic's sprawling cause and effect
video installation was fun to try and figure out with its
gee whiz factor. I appreciated the way his looping events
activated all of the screens to create the illusion of connections
between the individual monitors. I was slightly baffled
by Lynn Sullivan's basement door in the middle of the gallery
and billboard structure hanging above it. One silly bastard
tried to open the sculpture, which was obviously all one
piece. Amy Barkow's video of emptiness works as an existential
gesture, and that's how I'm going to have to look at this
one. Barkow places a camera looking down the long empty
space behind a temporary wall, while a monitor on the adjacent
wall shows the dark passage. I sort of wanted to draw some
circles on all that empty space. Jason Mombert's New Sincerity
is a big, gift-wrapped, pop-culture party shack. The pink
room with its' balloon ceiling houses a whacky video of
a party where a dude in a white suit offers some kind of
pop art communion consisting of pop tarts and Champagne.
There's a lot of popping going on, and the bottle smashing
at the end made me want to pop some of the balloons and
cause some mayhem myself, so I decided to lay off the booze
until I made it back to the 'burg. Elsewhere, Joe McKay
had an excellent art video game where two people try and
match colors using old school, Atari paddle like knobs.
I didn't give it a go, but watching the pretty patterns
almost put me in a trance. Also, there was another bit by
eTeam where you could go in and have your photo digitally
slapped on a wall-sized projection of a western.
Rating:
Outpost is up into July sometime ( 3 1/2 Greenbergs)
*Sixty Seven doesn't even pretend to have a theme
for its summer show, and well, it shows. The funky exhibit
has some strong points but basically I was disappointed
by the mishmash of work. Sometimes, when a particular work
is so good or bad, it fucks with the entirety. In this case,
Torsten Zenas Burns' installation surrounding his video
were ridiculously ugly, white washed junk objects splattered
with neon paint. The large, cluttered sculpture was a visual
bomb in the space, even though the video portion was pretty
funny. The artist covered in paint romping around in various
vignettes was overshadowed by the unfortunate installation,
which included a baby stroller and a motorcycle helmet.
The remainder of the show follows your standard bell curve
with marginal, unremarkable, and good work. One artist's
self-portraits of herself making faces and putting in her
contacts reminded me of those summer AP projects in high
school. I thought it was unspoken rule that artists' made
these once or twice and never again. Getting better were
Pierre Obando's Coke logo inspired abstraction and Yuh-Shioh
Wong's gentle, pale hued paintings of animals in traces
of landscapes. Eric Trosko also appeared again with some
breezy canvasses of his strange hybrid objects. I genuinely
enjoyed Javier Cambre's odd video, Monsieur Hyde, and Jade
Townsend's sculpture/theatrical prop of what appeared to
be a fellow drunkard passed out standing up. I really couldn't
be bothered with the rest of the work in the show, since
most of it was vaguely annoying and unremarkable. I was
so angered by Burns' ugliness, I left without taking the
press release and my notes and memory were less than reliable
the following morning. Summer show is poorly lumped together
through July 27th.
Rating:
Parker's Box closed for the summer with Distant
Shores, an eclectic group show of some familiar faces
from previous shows. A personal favorite of mine, Fabien
Verschaere, a French artist, had several of his little watercolor
paintings in the back of the space. He applies an illustrative
style to surreal, imaginative subject matter and creates
a non-linear narrative. Joshua Stern's large format, black
and white photographs of intricate setups involving what
appear to be matchstick men were the most compelling images
in the show. The miniatures appear defy their apparent simplicity
and create overblown melodrama from ordinary materials.
I liked Jason Glasser's landscapes on the backs of auto
glass, it's really a very nice, slightly bowed surface for
his colorful marks. Still, I was bored by Janine Variviere's
fragmented montage of flowers or Karolyn Hatton's faux flower
arrangements. Stefan Sehler's coolly rendered series of
mountain landscapes really did nothing for me, as the thinly
applied paint and stylized rendering didn't offer an enticing
vista nor a compelling conceptual reason for not offering
it.
Rating:
Distant Shores closed Sunday June 25th.
Speaking of things in the distance, Black and White Gallery
is currently previewing next season's line and four
artists previously exhibited.
Of the new models, I responded most favorably to Janice
Handleman's simple paintings of circles. Circles! I almost
wanted to ask for her number, but realized that might border
on stalking. So, instead I marveled at her grid of circles,
well there were four little portraits that made the work
far more interesting than just circles. Just circles! I
swoon at the thought. Elizabeth Zetchel had a nice painting
of bird with a small, outlined figure floating on the surface
that looked a lot like the bird paintings by Anne Craven.
Christopher Broughton's rather insanely layered, colored
grids reminded me vaguely of Al Held, but without the illusionism.
Of the old guard, I couldn't help but wonder if Andrew Piedilato
had actually found old Ab-Ex paintings in an abandoned studio
and appropriated them for the inaugural show last fall,
and I am still left wondering. These things look like artifacts
from the 50's. Meghan Foster's tightly controlled domestic
scene looked rather cold and lonely. I much preferred Lael
Marshall's whimsical little canvas in the corner. Really,
I just like Marshall's modernist sources more than Foster's
chilly post-modernism.
Rating:
Out in the second space, David Baskin had some rather beautiful,
wax cast objects attached to the cement walls. The cast
sections of furniture came in various colors and sort of
emerged from the wall, like they had been buried. It made
the courtyard feel as if hadn't been built up so much as
dug out. Baskin's work continues the excellent work going
on in the back of Black and White, which has been more experimental
than everything inside so far.
Rating:
There is also a site-specific dance scheduled for the weekends
at the gallery that sounds quite intriguing. On the Horizon
runs through July 7th.
I was happily surprised with the group show, No Trespassing,
at Priska Juschka. Having read my Foucault in grad
school and debated notions of self-policing, I was rather
intrigued with the guest-curated show. Rebecca Uchill and
artist Mark Sarosi were responsible for the improvement
in the art, but I have to give someone credit at the gallery
for letting them curate the show. Sue De Beer's trapper
keepers containing her favorite zines immediately sent me
back to high school and the daily trauma. Well, I never
shot anyone but I can remember doing plenty of crazy shit,
exactly what De Beer is fascinated with; the difficulties
of youth, which I am starting to think of as a high powered
car blowing donuts in a dirt parking lot. There's plenty
of energy but no direction. Anyway, her photo of masked
teens violently making out is pretty disturbing. De Beer
thankfully frames her exploration of teen angst in a way
that seems less exploitive than dirty Larry. I really liked
Brock Enright's props and evidence from his for-hire kidnapping
service. The Ratbasketball and other homemade restraints
are really funny/scary. Bill Brown's Surveillance Camera
Players, which finds the artist and company performing 1984
at the 6th Ave L tunnel is a riot, and actually poses the
question, "who actually watches those monitors?"
No one really until something awful happens. J.S. Bogg's
has some of his funny money in the show. I wonder if he'll
have to go digital to tackle the new bills coming down the
pipe. Curator Mark Sarosi's Panopticon is such a literal
translation of the prison it is actually kind of silly.
His curved wall of fake looking surveillance cameras blink
and sputter about when you move in front of them. A much
better invocation of the panopticon is Vibeke Jensen's,
Blind Spot, a hidden surveillance booth in the mirrored
column in the gallery. The first time I went through the
show, I didn't notice it. The second time, there was a cable
giving away the hiding place. For whatever reason, you are
also being monitored as you monitor the gallery space, and
it's in that duality of watching yourself being watched
that gets at the insidiousness of the panopticon. Once you
are aware of your visibility, you begin to make adjustments
and police yourself. I'm pretty much a nerd in public until
the booze takes hold, then I lose that learned self-awareness
and start kicking garbage cans. Takes a couple of New York's
finest to get me back in line…Ahem.
Unfortunately, Nin Bruderman's photos are extremely bland,
Eric Stein's wall drawing looks way too tentative to be
termed graffiti and doesn't feel remotely transgressive,
and Jeremy Hobb's overdone Museum of Natural History light
box overshadows a beautiful image made from an interesting
photographic process using guns, electricity, and photopaper.
Rating:
No Trespassing is saying "Don't Touch That"
until July 21.
I couldn't help but think that the show sort of continued
around the corner at Momenta art since most of the
work in their show, Focus Group, dealt with issues
of privacy in post Patriot Act America. The show starts
with pretty much with Tana Hartgest's Bitter Nigger Network
prints. Hargest is African-American, so its alright to laugh
at the artist's self-effacing take on the marketing of blackness.
I kept thinking about Spike Lee suing TNN to stop them from
making Spike TV a Network. Fuck, they should call themselves
Stupid White Dude TV. Hargest prints are part of a much
larger project, but are pretty scathing unto themselves.
Perry Hoberman's spot on reproductions of OS X warning boxes
are ingenious representations of our increasingly invasive
relationship with corporate America. The best one is a Trademark
and Copyright dialogue box that alerts you of infringement
and presents you with basically realistic options should
our computer society become more transparent to corporations
and the government. Its basically here, Adobe sends your
registration information along with your serial number (store
bought of course) to its database for later action unless
you compress a few files here and there. He's also got one
warning you of terrorist activity with an option to have
your computer call a taxi, but the default is surrender.
George Kimmerling's faux real estate guide for sex offenders
could be sent out in the mail now to sex offenders in Jersey
and they wouldn't blink since they actually live in a different
reality of privacy. The implication that sex offenders will
be segregated is where the scary possibilities of this piece
begin, since the government could easily target other marginal
groups as threats to moral and national security. David
Opdyke's electoral maps divided into corporate logos is
probably the least serious work in the show, but as revealing
as any of it, as fewer and fewer conglomerates exercise
more control over the public and influence the merging governmental
ideologies. I felt like having a drink after this show,
it stirred the dark recesses of my simple little mind. Focus
Group took of for the mid-west on June 30th,
so if you missed it keep an eye out for the artists this
fall.
Rating:
(if only all the art was as intellectually and aesthetically
relevant…)
Pierogi lightened things up a bit, or at least allowed
my mind to shut down a bit while my eyes trolled over the
obsessive drawings. A collection of fan favorities is up
through the dog days of summer and a room full of largely
systemic drawers makes a case for my least favorite aesthetic.
Of course, I'm generalizing here, Dawn Clements large observational
pen and ink drawing and Irene Pijoan's meticulous and overwhelming
cut outs don't really qualify as systemic art, but they
are my favorites in the show. Well, along with William Pope
L.'s white paint text pieces with great one-liners like
"White People are Us", and William is a black
artist merrily getting his critique on. I was struck how
many old white lady collectors were touring Pierogi, and
I wondered what they thought of Pope L.'s humorous barbs.
Anyway, there is a host of interesting uses of pencil, ink,
and pigments on display, like John J. O'Connor's dense mushroom
cloud of text, line, and color. The name escapes me, but
the drawings on the left when you walk in were also better
examples of the noodling going on. In Heat is sweltering
in the gallery until July 28th.
Rating:
Rounding out this summer's crop of group shows is Summer
Reading back at Schroeder Romero. This show has a
lot of drawing, but it there is an emphasis on the textual
and narrative aspects of the genre. Curated by Larry Walczak
of Eye Wash, Summer Reading is uneven, but what group show
isn't. I immediately identified with David Kramen's confessional
drawings on paper and the gallery walls. Kramen includes
such gems as "Half Empty. Half Full. Fuck You"
in relation to a drawing of the proverbial pint glass and
a self-effacing narrative about the slow, painful transition
from cool college guy into middle-aged loser. I empathized
with the pitiable wall installation and the white guy pathos.
Bill Shuck's wall installation using grass is a technical
marvel, but I have already forgotten what it actually said.
Pierogi's Joe Amhein has his signature sign painter's lettering
on vellum, that are pleasant enough, but don't really "emphasize
the absurdity of art criticism" as the press release
says, I do that! So, yeah, there's David Shapiro's excellent
drawing/text installation using white raised lettering that
somehow makes the text appealing. It's pretty much a free
fall from here. There's a really awful transparent book
sculpture, an alarmingly annoying LCD monitor in a literal
bible belt, Leslie Brack's ransom type paintings which I
didn't like much at Plus Ultra when they were there, and
Robin Michals didactic rotting fruit as metaphor for warring
nation in decline. Summer Reading is schooling fools through
July 28th.
Rating:
I've been throwing around Greenbergs fairly liberally, but
who can blame me. Every group show, well wait a minute,
there's this new space on Grand called Fluxcore that
had this month's worst show that would get a big ole' zero
if it weren't for Donnie Myers amusing text on glass works.
Everything else in the nightmare of a show aptly titled
"Between Waking and Sleeping" seems have shambled
right out your worst undergrad critiques. It suddenly got
cold in here and it isn't the air conditioner. I mean this
show makes me almost take back everything I said about the
bad painting shows in June, well, nah. I recommend sticking
to the Bellwether side of the street until the fall.
Rating:
(I don't know when this show comes down, but the sooner,
the better.)
So that's it for the first full season of the Keane A. Pepper
show. I'll be returning in the fall as long as the Hipster
Network is still on the air. Please drop by in August for
a special summer column, and all you gallery owners don't
hesitate to arrange studio visits and check out my work.
I have a new series of circles using beer cans and, well,
beer. You can't imagine the contrast a Brooklyn Brown provides.
Ah, I'm just messin', I only draw circles with a China brush
while I listen to New Age music.
Send me mail:
keanepepper@hotmail.com
 
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