Queers, Crime, Midgets & Murder
Maya Pindyck
First find Brooklyn
Fire Proof Inc. then prepare yourself for a treat far more profound than the
vaudevillian title hiccups. “Queers?” Expect sepia colored paintings
of women enjoying love orgies in the grand old style of male master painting/bating.
“Crime” refers to nostalgic portraits of individuals who have been
executed on death row. “Midgets” actually means combinations of truly
tiny miniatures, in which the littlest of people enjoy a Sunday afternoon on
rat bones while the equally wee protest war atop a toy police car. And, finally,
“Murder” contemplates human suffering on canvas, egg, and wall.
The four artists are David Adamo, Anitra Haendel, Tereza Mazur, and Jessica Segall.
This combination of pulp results in a political pulse pumping from one room to
the next.
Jessica Segall’s
“Queer” female subjects emerge from historical paintings, 1850-1950’s
erotica and antiquated images. What is first striking about these works is how
classically the scenes are painted. Women across a range of decades, cultures
and sources are joined together in Segall’s interpretation of Ingres’
Turkish bath, painted in such as way that it only seems natural they be found
there together. Another painting recreates Rubens’ “Diana & Castillo”
in a new and commanding light. Segall invites the viewer to witness timeless
yet provocative events, happening in the traditional style of painting from a
feminist mind’s eye.
At the gallery
entrance you’ll find Anitra Haendel’s small round portraits of Karla
Fay Tucker, the first woman to be executed in Texas since the death penalty was
reinstated in 1863, painted with painful accuracy. A red square reads the number
of days Karla spent on death row (4,979.) Two small clay guns face each other
nearby, suggesting this Crime can only achieve a dead-end. Haendel’s comments
on the consequences of fear extend beyond the realm of humankind. There are also
animals to consider. Haendel’s massive shark in “Great White”
is meant to evoke the illusion of fear, but instead translates as an image of
reverence.
David Adamo’s
small worlds make us reconsider our own. Miniature people, rat bones, itty-bitty
beds and dog molars are dressed up with witty titles, producing both humorous
and unsettling scenes. Toy exterminators hose down a bed in “The place where
Grampas die.” A shiny red truck gnarls with upside-down fangs, flaunting
a giant tongue. A tiny trash pile sits alone. Adamo’s works resonate a relationship
between the commonalities of everydayness and the enormity of death. The miniature
activities seem surprisingly urgent, as if belonging to an immeasurable time
line of events, loss and possibilities.
For Tereza Mazur “Murder” and “Grief” are sister eggs of
the same animal. It is the grieving process and internalization of human atrocities
that Mazur’s paintings address. In “Continuum, Bloody Sunday in Russia,
1905” people trail off the canvas and onto the wall in an uncontained moment.
In “My Hands All Over The Massacre” the same image is painted on an
ostrich egg, its round form carrying a visual weight. Refugees, soldiers and
survivors are painted roughly, in stark black and white tones. Mazur’s works
reveal a struggle to believe that an understanding of violence is inseparable
from an acceptance of its nature.
And yes, the show
is open to all—queers, midgets and murderers. Even Texans.
