09.21 2005

This Dude Hates Me So Much That…

he bothered to write about my work twice on his blog. i think its awesome. i really touched someone and he has a hell of a sense of humor. heres the first oneI found Vox to be a rough co-op space. On view this weekend were shows that you would expect to see at a contemporary art gallery trying to be hip. In one room was some sort of installation where the artist set up a computer, music and those cheap string lights found in 50% of college dorm rooms today. Yawn. the second(Before my post, here’s a fun game… go to the Vox Populi Web site and scroll down to current exhibitions. Look at the small thumbnails for the five current shows. I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count, to guess which artist I’m most drawn to. For anyone who has read this site more than a week, you should get it right. Answer is implied below.)A little while ago I visited Philadelphia and wrote a bit about the gallery hopping I did there. I wrote about my experience at Vox Populi (Libby Rosof reviews it here) and how I found it lacking and very, if not way too… current. And here I mean current as a bad thing. The decorative paintings are fine and all, but the string light installation with quirky computer animation has got to go. Seriously, some governing organization should be formed that restricts artists from using some materials. At this point I’m willing to submit only one thing to the list… string lights. Clearly we cannot trust artists to restrain themselves so someone must do it for them. And titling the piece, “Scorch Doppler, unearthing the demise of a teenage phoneme….” only adds to the hogwash already wasting my time. Libby states that Max Lawrence, the guilty artist, “goes wild and funky and basically out-of-control when he installs a big space…” I have to disagree. It’s not wild. It’s not funky. It’s so completely now that it is tame and expected. Work that is visually and conceptually opposite of this (restrained, elegant, finished, etc) would be “wild” and “funky” today. Chalk this up as another example of installation art I totally despise at this point. Fortunately Libby is more open-minded and provides a great review.Libby goes on to talk about the decorative paintings of Amy Adams and Anne Schaefer which I found to be too decorative. At the same time they were visually appealing. Lastly Libby writes about Jason Hughes. I found his work to be a good escape from the other artists and I felt this guy was serious about his work. He was the clear standout to me, although I think Lawrence’s colorful installation will remain in most viewer’s minds for much longer. I guess some artists will do what it takes to make that happen.Kudos to Libby for the great review… even if I disagree with a lot of it. That is the point of writing about art though, of course.

heres the first post
heres the first one
the second