Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I pity the fool that missed this opening...you gotta grow up sometime...wow. Um, for real? Ok...the mad scientist from another dimension...you know, like the Jonas brothers or the Lawrence brothers, but not lame...we need a safari, not a stroll through the park


A photo by Andres Serrano included in
"America: Now and Here."  Serrano became
well-known for his controversial photo
"Piss Christ," which claimed to portray a
crucifix in a jar of the artist's urine.
              This month’s First Friday festivities were unusual in that they were completely dominated by a single show.  Don’t ask me how, but for one night on May 6, Kansas City was selected as the first of three cities to be transformed into a nexus of contemporary creative culture by the traveling show entitled “America:Now and Here.”  The show features over 150 artists, filmmakers, poets, musicians, and playwrights in a daring attempt to represent a broad, cross-sectional sampling of the best that American culture has to offer, ranging from Sting to Philip Glass, to RobertRauschenberg, to Cindy Sherman, to Edward Albee, to Joan Baez.  And yes, even Leonard Nimoy is included.  I had never known Nimoy in any capacity beyond his role as Dr. Spock on the original Star Trek series until I saw his name next to a black and white photo of several overweight nude women posing ala Matisse’s dancing nudes.  That is exactly Kansas City needs events such as “Now and Here.”  It is a show with work that is a bit more new and edgy than most First Friday shows, and as a result people unexpectedly discover all kinds of new and exciting things when exposed to it.

             “Now and Here” is such a large show that it doesn’t really do justice to speak about any individual pieces.  They all exist in a context with each other, which is fitting because the show is intended to, and does, exist within the larger context of modern America.  Like our country, it is a rough mixture of disparate components, but in some areas they are able to blend together a little more smoothly.  Pieces of completely different character abut one another, and the show stretches over a massive area, but all these different pieces belong together because they are united under the same ideals.  “America: Now and Here” is on view at the Leedy-Voulkos Gallery, The Base Gallery, The Beggar’s Table, Arts Incubator, The Sherry Leedy Gallery of Contemporary Art, and perhaps some other places that I didn’t get to.  The show is listed as running through May 28, so be sure to make the trip down to the Crossroads before then to see what is perhaps the most ambitious First Fridays showing to date.

Jeremy Rockwell and Jeromy Morris at the Scarlett Garnet

A small glimpse at some of the work
from the Rockwell-Morris show.
             It’s difficult to think of something to say about Jeremy Rockwell and Jeromy Morris’s two-person show at the Scarlett Garnet because the exhibit lacks any specific focus.  Having never seen work by either artist before, I’m not even sure which pieces belong to whom.  The only guide to the show is a hand-drawn diagram of the pieces on the wall with a corresponding price list, and the names “Rockwell+Morris” written on it.  This presentation is not atypical of the Scarlett Garnet, but despite the informal presentation and lack of cohesiveness in the work, it was one of the more interesting shows outside of the “America: Now and Here” showings. 
             There are plenty of strong suits present in the works.  Inventively rendered graphic images and patterning are present in several pieces.  However, these stronger elements are conceptually and technically spread throughout the experimentation of two artists who are in the early stages of developing an artistic identity.  The most notable pieces appear to be either screen printed or photo-transferred images of cityscapes onto wood panels.  The high contrast and intricate detail present in these pieces help them stand out from the rest of the works, and by far the largest piece in the show was a roughly four by four-foot panel of a New York street scene, which was too large to hang and instead situated off to the side on the floor. 

A detailed look at the largest piece in the Rockwell-Morris show
             These pieces are visually pleasing.  They possess a nostalgic quality by featuring older structures that feel like relics of the past because of the technique used to create them.  The scenes are further strengthened by adding small embellishments of color and also allowing the bare wood to show through in parts, which manipulates the space to a state beyond being a straight representational image.  Developing a visual style is a period that every artist must go through before moving on to developing a concept for their work.  Judging from these pieces and venue they are in it is likely that the creator is still at this early stage in their career, so it would be unfair to expect anything more out of the work.

Pieces such as this one don't live up
to the standards established by
other pieces in the show
             Considering the stage that the artists are working at it is an interesting show that presents many glimpses of promise, but one slightly unsettling thing about the show is how varied the experimentation is.  Just judging from everything in the show one might assume that the work of as many as seven artists was being represented.  The styles and subject matter of the works are all over the map, and they demonstrate at least enough technical acumen that the artists should be zeroing in on a more specific artistic identity or idea than is demonstrated. 

             For example, there is plenty of evidence in the work to suggest that a wood panel covered in paint and glitter is not their best work and doesn’t belong in the show.  Another piece which features an abstract pattern created by a pile of cut logs.  The ends of the logs face towards the viewer and create an abstract image by allowing the wood grain beneath to show through them. By itself it is not a bad piece, but in the context of the rest of their show it feels incomplete and simplistic.  It is obvious that Rockwell and Morris have talent, but it is essential that they raise their own standards and learn to expect more consistency out of their own work.  Otherwise they may never successfully find their way through the experimental process. 

Steve Brisendine at Plenum Space Gallery

            This is going to be a very difficult and unconventional review to write for a few reasons.  One reason is that this is the first time, at least that I’m aware of, I will be writing a review about an art reviewer.  Steve Brisendine is relatively well-known for his column “ArtKC 365,” which appears on the website www.ereview.org.  In his column he makes a daily post about a show currently on view in the Kansas City area.  His posts are usually no more than a couple hundred words and focus on describing the work and what the art is about.  It might sound easy to do post something like this every day, but in reality it has to be mind-bogglingly difficult.  It might only take an hour or so to write and post one of these entries, but most people lack the conviction to stick to a diet or exercise for twenty minutes a day, much less produce a new piece of writing daily.  Not to mention that the pool of artists has to shrink pretty rapidly at this pace.  I only review about five artists a month and it’s sometimes hard to find work by people I haven’t reviewed before.  So respect.  
             Another thing that makes this review unconventional is that I don’t have any pictures to go with it.  I aim to avoid contact with the artist when I review shows because I don’t want their additional input to skew my perception of the work itself, and if it’s a show I don’t particularly like it can be awkward trying to scrounge up some vague compliments.  Photographing work at a show is a lightning rod for the artist’s attention, so I try to do it as surreptitiously as possible.  Typically I just have to hang around for a moment until there are enough other viewers to distract the artist from my activity, but I was pessimistic that that opportunity would occur at Brisendine’s show. 
           Ascending the stairs into Plenum Space the far wall can be seen first.  Then as you continue up your head begins at the floor-level and rises as you enter in the middle of the room.  This entrance offers a small preview of the show before plunging you right into the middle of it, and my reaction as I made this entrance was exactly this: “Huh?...whoa.”
            For his show Brisendine chose to display small canvases that were each covered in a single solid color.  Besides the title, choice of color, canvas size, and in a few instances the use of a round or diamond-oriented canvas, there is no difference between any of the pieces.  My initial reaction was to turn around and leave, but then I realized that the only people there were me, Brisendine, and a guest of his seated at the far end of the room.  I was in too deep to cut and run, so I made my way round the room and read the titles as he watched in anticipation of my reaction. 

            I tried to procure an explanation for the show but ended up grabbing at air.  Was it serious?  Was it a reaction to his feeling so self-conscious of his role as an art reviewer that he became reluctant to make his own work?  Was I supposed to feel like a fool by pretending to be interested in looking at what are essentially blank canvases? 
           Fortunately another person entered and he began talking with them, and in overhearing his conversation I discovered that each canvas was actually a specific colored shape that had a real-life meaning to it.  For example, one canvas represented the Libyan flag, which is a plain green rectangle.  Several of the other pieces he mentioned also represented flags, but what got me was that he would actually call it a flag rather than a painting.  They are painted canvases, not flags, and without an explanation the viewer is not going to make that connection.  The format of the presentation is crucial when making such minimalistic work, and in this show there is not enough information to portray the idea that these pieces represent symbols.  Rather, they are objects that lack the qualities that we have come to expect from art done on canvas.

            If the flag pieces were actually plain colored rectangles of fabric, then perhaps the idea of the shape as a symbol would get across.  Or maybe if some of the pieces were universal icons, like a red octagon, it would occur to the viewer that the others should be thought of as symbols as well.  But as it stands now, it is an extremely minimalistic showing of colored canvases.  Certain that the show couldn’t retain a viewer for more than a few seconds and attract a large enough audience to conceal my photographic activities, I left without any photos.  Fortunately I don’t think that photos are really necessary in describing the show.

Guinotte Wise at the Hilliard Gallery

Some scientists believe this wheeled equine animal
to be a modern relative of the giant metal rockinghorse
            Since I began attending First Fridays in Kansas City, there is one piece that I’ve seen every time without fail.  It is a large five to six-foot tall metal sculpture of a rocking horse.  I’ve seen this shiny metal fixture on the sidewalk outside of several different galleries on the east side of the Crossroads, most often in front of the Hilliard Gallery.  I came to think of the horse as an odd symbol for First Fridays.  It wasn’t labeled, it was placed in spots that invited interaction despite being too awkward to truly interact with, and it had a somewhat gaudy, outsider look to it.  Obviously nobody was interested in buying the thing, yet its owner placed it outside every First Friday to mark the occasion of the event.  Now, finally, I think I may have discovered who made the garish creature after seeing the show by Guinotte Wise at the Hilliard Gallery.
             Looking at the work of Guinotte Wise, it is easy to envision the place where he lives.  It has to be somewhere out in the country where he can keep a huge selection of scrap metal to draw from.  Most likely he has an old barn full of junk that could fittingly appear on the TV show American Pickers, or maybe Hoarders, in which he spends much of his time tinkering with small metal odds and ends, occasionally turning a finished piece of art out of the mess.  If given the chance who would turn down an opportunity to do that every day?
           
            What sets Wise’s work apart from others who make similar sculptures from scrap metal is the refinement of his finished product.  Many artists fall victim to the appeal that the materials themselves have.  They are content to create random assemblages out of old license plates and the like, turning a pile of metal scrap into a stuck-together pile of metal scrap.  But Wise is beyond this.  His sculptures come with a purposeful refinement, and the characters of the materials themselves act as an embellishment to the piece rather than being the main attraction.

            Many of his pieces either contain gun elements or combine create a gun.  Some of the more interesting works in Wise’s show are sci-fi inspired ray guns complete with custom display pedestals.  These pieces become fascinating artifacts through the completeness of the vision and presentation, physically creating something that previously only existed in cartoons, movies, and our imaginations.  The most interesting of the gun sculptures is perhaps one that stuck a typesetting drum onto the barrel of a .38 revolver.  The drum appears to belong to a piece of printing machinery from the 30s or 40s, and looks like something that was smuggled out of a William S. Burroughs dream.
One of Wise's ray gun pieces
            The same completeness of vision benefits several of his abstract wall-hanging pieces.  While these works are more akin to the random assemblage style of working, they are compositionally and materially very well thought out.  Wise allows the materials to stand alone as unique objects that also fit into a larger purposeful composition.  The end result is similar to an abstract painting that is enhanced through an added variety of space, texture, and material, which becomes far more interesting than could ever be achieved through paint alone.

This "gumball baby" is not the darling
of this particular show
            The successful pieces of the show are all marked with a distinctly odd, quirky feel to them.  They are unusual objects that don’t make a lot of sense and push the viewer’s imagination.  Some of the less-successful pieces in the show are the ones that seem to gravitate towards producing a quick, easy solution out of the materials.  One example of this is a piece that consists of a robot made by fixing arms and legs to a gumball machine with a baby doll’s head in the machine reservoir. As humans, we look for the human element in things, and producing anything that resembles a person is typically the first response anyone has to an object.  If one hundred people were handed a gumball machine and instructed to make a sculpture out of it, I’d wager that at least eighty of them would come up with some kind of humanoid form. 
            Along the base of one wall were several small robots that suffer from the same problem.  If the robots were incredibly large they might have the possibility of being remarkable, but instead there is nothing more to them than being a handful of patched together robots.  Wise also has several animal forms on display which, while being similar in construction to the robot and humanoid pieces, manage not to appear so dull.  A large part of their success relies on the fact that these iconic natural images are constructed out of man-made objects.  Yes, the idea is relatively simple, but the end product is not necessarily as intuitive as it is to construct a humanoid form out of the materials.

The Walker Brothers at Next Space Gallery

Once again I must tip my hat to the Next Space Gallery.  One of the most unconventional galleries in the Crossroads that I’ve encountered, it is quickly becoming one of my favorite through its consistently offbeat style and presentation of work.  This month the drawings of the Walker brothers (Luke, Spencer, Micah, and Austin) were displayed up in the front window of the gallery.  The drawings, all done on copier paper, bear obvious style differences between the artists but all share the same energy of surrealistic portrayals of the subconscious combined with modern culture.  Or in simpler terms, they are some really intricate, interesting doodles. 

The Walker brothers' show as it appears from the street
Most of the drawings are densely packed with images and marks.  Some show recognizable icons like Big Bird and Mario amid a jumble of abstract imagery, with an erupting volcano in the background.  Others rely on abstract patterning and mark making to create an interesting multi-dimensional mind space.  The incredibly informal execution and presentation of the pieces doesn’t detract from the work at all, but actually enhances the raw talent contained in it.  There are literally millions of people out in the world who make work similar to this and think of themselves as real artists but can’t make anything that’s even in the same ballpark as the Walker brothers. 

Their drawings are on par with many other young emerging artists today that are gaining some success.  For example, their drawings are in similar vein of the work by Brooklyn artist Ray Sohn currently on view atWonder Fair in Lawrence, but the informality and naïve energy contained in the drawings is far more interesting than the stiff, formulaic “artiness” contained in Sohn’s show.  If given the proper opportunity, exposure, and direction, they could achieve a place between art world heavyweights like Michael Krueger and Tony Fitzpatrick.  Their work could really turn some heads by having the possibility of the four of them working collaboratively on larger, more sophisticated projects.  It is rare to find more than two artists who can work well together, and looking at these small doodles through the window panes I see a lot of potential in where it could go.

The limit of that potential is determined by the brothers themselves.  Maybe they are perfectly content with their current status.  Hell, I’ve scoured the Internet trying to find more information and can’t even find out who they are.  I’m assuming that they are young amateur artists based on the appearance of their show, but for all I know they are already famous and working under aliases.  Or maybe it is only one person working under the guise of four brothers.  Who knows?  This isn’t the first time I’ve been stymied trying to research someone I saw at the Next Space Gallery, and that’s another reason I’ve come to like the venue.  It seems that the gallery attracts artists that are completely unknown: no websites, no press, sometimes no name accompanying the work (see my March review).  This makes visiting the gallery is a unique experience.  Even if you find the work on display underwhelming, in this digital age there is still a value in knowing that you are seeing something that does not exist outside of the gallery walls.


Laura Kozak at Frontspace

Kozak's photo of the Plum Tree in Lawrence, KS
            Laura Kozak’s show “re/lease” deals with a subject that is near and dear to my heart: abandoned buildings.  In particular, her photographs feature empty retail spaces in strip malls and sites commonly seen lining four and six-lane avenues in suburbs across America.  I began a similar photographic project last summer before once again being swept up in the funnel cloud of school, and in fact one of her photos featured the Plum Tree, an empty Chinese restaurant that I also photographed for my own project. 
              These scenes of abandoned commercial spaces are imbued with a haunting feel by contradicting our natural assumption regarding these sites.  We automatically regard places of business as being filled with people and activity because we only go to businesses that are open, and if they lack people and activity then they aren’t going to be around long.  We tend to pass by vacant spaces without paying them any attention.  An empty store is of no interest to a shopper, so they don’t really register in our minds as we drive by.  But when forced to consider an empty store, the viewer is presented with a surreal scene with plenty to consider. 

             Without occupants the store and parking lot become purposeless structures, causing the viewer to consider the space as a structure and environment similar to a large-scale art installation.  One might begin to wonder what it means to cover such a large expanse of land with concrete or to erect such a large, minimalistic structure of glass, concrete, and steel, and suddenly something we commonly think of as normal becomes very abnormal.

             Unfortunately, Kozak’s photographs stop at the doorstep in terms of exploring the subject.  All of her images show these places more or less as they would be seen from the street.  Not only is this the most simplistic way of approaching the subject, but I know I’ve seen several other photographers do the exact same thing.  What would make the show exponentially more interesting would be to physically explore the sites and highlight some of the details they contain.  This would be more engaging for the viewer by presenting them with images of things that they ordinarily wouldn’t see on their own, and would also be more effective by exposing the latent energy and character held by abandoned sites.
       
             One idea might be taking a picture from the front door of the building facing toward the street.  Everyone has the opportunity to see the building as it appears from the street, but not many people will ever experience the view from this vantage point.  Other opportunities arise if the building has been empty long enough there might be evidence of time taking its toll on the site.  Tall weeds might be growing out of cracks in the cement. Birds could take up residence in eaves and signs.  Painted words and images could be peeling and fading.  These are just a few ideas that could result in a more engaging collection of photographs, but the necessary element is having the desire to explore as an artist.  People like to be exposed to new things through viewing and experiencing art, and Kozak must be willing to take the next step and wander off the beaten path to find something interesting and new to present in her photographs.

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