Lure of the Lore – D. Dominick Lombardi

Walking through "Lure of the Lore" is like daydreaming out loud. Not surreal so much, but secret-real or sub-real. The kind of real where inspirations, ideas and thoughts get stuck, reoriented and then distilled; chain reactions that slip and slide around the real or supposed real where seconds become hours, hours infinite.

Lure of the Lore

D. Dominick Lombardi

 

 

 

Walking through "Lure of the Lore" is like daydreaming out loud. Not surreal so much, but secret-real or sub-real. The kind of real where inspirations, ideas and thoughts get stuck, reoriented and then distilled; chain reactions that slip and slide around the real or supposed real where seconds become hours, hours infinite.

Esthetically it is Home Depot meets postmodernism, but don’t be fooled. There are some brilliant juxtapositions here that will change the way you see for quite some time. In Cece Cole’s installations there are very definitely separate thoughts here, which are integrated smartly with the existing industrial detail making it all the more challenging.

These stations, if you will, are half representation and half camouflage with an orientation toward the enlightening and, dare I say, even uplifting. I think of the strange fabricator who works for one of the Disney parks, that this would be where he unwinds, plots and plays. It is all that kind of sub-navigating celebration of the quiet necessities, all be they incidental.

Cole stacks various molded packing styrofoam along pre-existing, like-colored piping and valves that cascade down to a store-bought plastic pond that has overtones of a therapeutic purpose. A sort of function or form deal that neither touts nor taunts, it just teases.

Then, behind me are these shiny insulation boards, lights, glue jars, faux wood shelf-paper and projections all in low light, structures that smack of process and prose and are free of outside thoughts or preconceptions.

There are colorful floor situated islands of light that bring on a sense of vertigo. Another room on the other side of the gallery–a room wrapped in green plastic wrap–has no way in or out. Then there are other stations that look like storage areas and one hears the artist saying "Some day I will need this."

Yet, amid the mirth and mystery are fresh cut flowers, aromatic lilies next to stinky sweet spent beer bottles that enhance even further the visceral effect of it all. Here, life’s unconscious prompts physically realized daydreams, mixed with incomplete memories stolen from unknown passers by, worn down and resurrected.