In the Moment with Kristin Baker
Randy Gladman
crowd at Deitch Projects, one of the few vital galleries in SoHo to have
resisted the exodus to Chelsea, had already spilled out onto Grand Street by
the time I arrived. This was the
first Friday of the 2003 art season and a grand tour of openings had lead me
through scores of packed art houses further West. Deitch openings, of course, attract a different sort of
crowd, one that has more to do with the pinnacle of youth style than
contemporary art, and tonight was typical; hipsters with trucker caps and the
electroclash kids were out in force.
I wondered if they were here because they are fans of Kristin Baker, a
recent Yale MFA grad whose New York City debut solo exhibition glistened on the
walls inside, or if some mutant sense of high style had attracted them like
moths to this most fashionable of parties.
As I was
crossing the street, the roar of a muscle car approached rapidly from the
direction of Thompson Street. It
was already dark and all I could see to match the aggressive growl were two
headlights speeding towards me at a terrifying clip, now less than a block
away. As I leaped onto the curb
the 1968 red Cobra flew past, the driver’s blur of blond hair swishing in the
wind. I turned to hurl caustic
vitriol at the driver. “What’s
wrong with you, asshole?!? This is
SoHo, not Daytona!” But my
admonishing yell was completely drowned out by the sound of the engine gurgling
past and the surprising cheers of the hipsters with whom I now found myself
standing. At first I though they
were applauding the driver for trying to splat me like Frogger as I tried to cross
the street, but their cheers and cat calls continued as the vintage sports car
flew down the block. What the hell
is going on, I wondered.
Snaking my
way through the packed gallery, I caught enough snippets of random
conversations to learn that Baker herself was driving the car that almost ran
me over. She had been dragging
down Grand Street in the Cobra and in an equally muscular and gorgeous Charger
all evening, offering thrill rides as extra entertainment for those who had
turned out for the opening. This
was classic Deitch sensational showmanship and the audience was drinking it up,
along with the free beer.
But I was
here to see Baker’s paintings. Never using brushes to create her works, she
wields knives, normally a tool of deconstruction and violence, to construct
worlds of speed and elegant tragedy.
In works like Big Bang Vroom and Boom Boom No. 1, Hockenheim,
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>her contemporary landscapes focus
on racecars as they tear around the track and smash into smithereens during
high velocity collisions. The
narratives depicted on these monumentally scaled PVC boards freeze crucial
fragments of time, the exact nanosecond when wild destruction occurs and God
decides if the racecar driver will live or die. With raucous hues lifted from Formula One bodies and flat
aesthetics derived from high tech auto shop tool logos, she causes atomic
moments of adrenaline-soaked fear to leaven into lingering operatic drama.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> She grafts aggressive planes of
luxurious, thinly sliced acrylic onto a visual language that lies halfway
between pure abstraction and high-speed photography, revealing a near
missionary reverence for motorsports.
Less
than a week after the opening of the exhibition, New York City mournfully
remembered September 11 on the second anniversary of the infamous attack.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Once again, images of the destruction
of that horrible day proliferated through all forms of media, the most famous
and memorable of which depicts an airliner frozen in the nothing-but-a-moment
of its impact with the skyscraper.
This image is burned onto our collective memory like a cattle brand, a
powerful icon of fear and destruction that defines our era.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It grasps our imaginations like a car
crash on the side of the highway.
We cannot look away.
Baker’s videogameish, pixilated sportscapes tap into a parallel iconic
power. There is irresistible
magnetism to the energy with which she injects the stories she tells. We are
drawn inexorably into their narratives.
We can’t look away.
