I am as you will be

The real and somber exhibition "I Am As You Will Be" at Cheim & Read is amazing. I use the word "real" in this context to describe something substantial, examined and profound. I applaud Cheim & Read for cultivating a show of tremendous visual exploration across extremely personal and philisophical ground.

The show explores artist's treatment of mortality; the skull being of course both metaphor and actuality. (We each have a skull inside of us, it is too delicate for us to think about. It is it's own time-bomb ticking, waiting to become all that we are. ) The work is in almost all cases intimate and personal. There is no way to consider death without an (unexpected) intimacy.

Exhibition up September 20 - November 3, 2007. Works at top are, in order: Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Adam Fuss.

Nasty Nice

The work of Melissa Ichiuji has been garnering a lot of attention these days, deservedly. Her strange cloth sculptures are somewhere between "Cirque de Soleil" and "the Brood": strange girlish creatures who are in turns sweet and predictable, and then, suddenly disturbingly destructive or sexual. The above image, "Caught," is one of the more frightening sculptures I have come across probably ever-- how many truly physically frightening sculptures are there (as opposed to those that are metaphysically disturbing)?

I applaud Ichiuji for making work that is both accessible and charming, and then, once having lulled you, unrestrainedly violent. Her details are unsparing: strange ovular tubes descending from young girls (or animals), strange lumps...she has honed in on our inherent fear of our flesh and innards, and our fear of the loss of innocence these girls represent.

Her work was exhibited at Irvine Contemporary in Washington DC this past spring.

Jules de Balincourt and the meaning of kitsch

Jules de Balincourt's new work is up at Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL) Sept 6-oct 13 2007. The painting above is my favorite from this show. I love the kitsch, ski-lodge meets sci-fi feel of the work. I have noticed more and more kitsch painting in the last years. In terms of language exploration, we could characterize kitsch as the serious and earnest painting (language) of a narrative scene that we appears to be in discord with outside context. To be certain something is kitsch, the narrative scene depicted and the outside information the audience has about the artist's intention or personal are in contrast. The narrative scene is a joke. But you can only know it is one is you have prior, outside information that contradicts what the artist is saying in particular work.

Think about this. You go to a flea market, and find a painted scene of a waterfall, in feathery, airbrushed language. The artist (unknown to you) may have painted that painting as a joke (the rest of the artist's work may be hard edged minimalist). It is kitsch to the artist. You may sincerely love feathery waterfall paintings: it is not kitsch to you. Or, you may love it because it goes against your aesthetic principles (you are a hard edge minimalist). Then it is kitsch to you. It is in its relation to its surroundings that kitsch is inferred; nothing is kitsch in the absolute.

Within that in mind, what do we think about kitsch in painting. Is it fun, funny, a conundrum, or an escape? Jules de Balincourt's work is refered to as "outsider" and "democratic". The fun of his work - and there is always a lighthearted tone of uncertain purpose-- is welcoming as it confounding. It is may be kitsch, be we really need more information.

Jim Houser at Jonathan Levine, Sept 6- Oct 6.

Jim Houser (and Jeff Soto) at Jonathan Levine Gallery Sept 6-Oct 6. More thoughts after I go check it out... here is another blog while you wait.

Gallery info: 529 West 20th Street, 9E New York, NY 10011 ph:212-243-3822. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

Eggebrecht

Echo Eggebrecht paints smartly. Her focus is on content and narrative, as opposed to language, and within that context she enters a world of double-meaning and ironic presenations. The above painting "Nick in Time" (2004) refers to the carvings on trees, made permanent even as the lovers have come and gone, and then gone for good. Also, with the throw-back to realism and landscape painting, perhaps that too was a 'nick in time'? Thirdly, there is a remix quality here, an old thing editted and presented again, and the old and new meanings form a third meaning: human alteration of the natural world.

I may be reading too much (no such thing as too much)-- but I do so because Eggebrecht brings it on. The ironic ambiguity in her work is between the narrative picture and what we know to be true of the world. She knows this, of course and plays with this ambiguity, pushing it further one way or the other. Sometimes the ambiguity, the punch line, lies in the title, a play of the meaning of a word and its visual equivalent. The painting below is entitled "Stars and Stripes" (2004):



Eggebrecht has had two solo shows in NYC, first at SixtySeven Gallery in 2004 and then last year at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, October 21 - November 25, 2006. Hopefully more to come.