Luis Gispert's show, El Mundo Es Tuyo (the world is yours), severely splits itself between the Zach Feuer and Mary Boone galleries. I wasn't familiar with the artist's work before I walked into the former on Saturday. I immediately fell in love (It didn't last.). What can I say? I'm a sucker for heart-shaped speakers and big, abstract beats that drift off into the ether. Gispert provided me with both. The lit mirror that hangs across from the speakers looks like it was taken from the set of a Miami Vice, but that's not a bad thing. It goes with the room.
Actually, this show is replete with cultural references and commentary that, for the most part, I ignored. If you're interested you can read the press release. Sometimes I'm in the middle of an exhibit, it's working on a purely aesthetic level, and I just wanna sit in its pocket. Beyond the speakers and mirrors are a couple breathtaking c-prints. Opulence and abandonment hold hands while they're hiding under the bleachers here. At first glance both photos are detailed shots of a tricked-out truck cabs. It wasn't until my second pass at them that I realized that they were double landscapes. Looking out through the windows of each cab, past the immediate shiny foregrounds are scenes of poverty and paranoia. So much for my easy stroll through a shiny beat-littered forest. It signaled the violence that was to come in the film showing across the street at Mary Boone.
It all started so well.
Ugh. I say that not because of the violence. Whatever to that. I've spent enough time on farms that the bleeding of the pig didn't make me flinch. (Someday I'll regale you with how I saw a calf being born at the farm at the state pen. Long story. I was 12 and on the weirdest field trip of my life.) The frying of the dog was predictable and more like Tron than Chainsaw Massacre. Anyway, there has to be an easier way to make a radio. That was a joke, of course. I got the whole spin on the radio--the hungry, magical, and rabid sounds of the master blaster--I just didn't find it very interesting. I'm even a easy mark for that sort of thing and you couldn't have paid me to care. As much as I was enamored of the the two rooms at Feur I was bored by the film at Boone. I mean, ANYTHING looks cool projected on a wall that big, but so what. The film was just pointlessly gruesome and creepy. There were some more c-prints on the walls, but they were only stills from the film. Nice Firebird though.
10 comments:
Sounds like it needed zazz.
It just needed to be cut in half like the fried radio dog, D. That's what it needed.
My sentiments exactly, Brent.
And why didn't they have fried radio dog hor d’oeuvres at the opening?
that's it: I'm calling my next show "fried radio dog."
If I were an artist I'd name all my shows after certain turns of phrases uttered by the ever-reliable nico.
If you weren't Brent Burket and were an artist you might call one of your pieces Brent Burket. I'm just sayin', it's happened more than once...
You mean like this? Heh-heh. You am The Bald Bastard.
That slaughter house scene was definitively a breath of fresh air in that stuffy gallery . It reminded me of something you see in a Herzog film. A great antidote to all the saccharine fluff they always show
I don't know, Anon. I found it exceedingly boring. In fact, I'd vote for more of "all the saccharine fluff they always show". I think that Mary Boone is at her absolute WORST when she's forcing the "edgy". I have a wide range of feelings about most of the artists in her stable (Ross Bleckner: Even when his work isn't that interesting I find it comforting to see someone painting so well. Hilary Harkness: I mean, seriously. Fuck YEAH! Peter Halley: I know I shouldn't like his paintings, but I do. Don't ask me why. Even I wouldn't wanna know. Barbara Kruger: God.), but I almost NEVER roll my eyes when I walk into her galleries. The only time the ocular upturn occurs is when she has shows like this one (Although I loved the half at Feuer.). And don't get me started on the month wasters that were her collaborative shows with Team. One of my biggest Chelsea eye rolls last year came when she put on that Aleksandra Mir show. Boring. Boring. Boring. Activity doesn't make for action, in my mind. Mary should stick with her eye. Not her head.
I don't think the work was trying to be edgy. No more than a canvas with a bunch of erect pricks spewing the words " fuck you art collector" That artist does't even show there. It seems the context of the gallery ruins the intention of the work. So, if you saw the film at Zach Feuer's space or your bedroom, it would read differently to you? Mary pays the bills with the cotton-candy's of the world. I have a felling this show is not flying out the door. So kudos, to the old gal for using all that sweet money to finance a show that makes people scratch their heads.
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