Proper Villains" curated by David Hunt
by Joyce B. Korotkin
Three standouts that go over the edge into new territories with materials that traditionally serve other functions are the works of Matthew Bakkom, Angelo Filomeno, and Doug Fishbone.
Bakkom’s sculpture, "Gone with the Wind (Reels 7 and 8)," was literally created from its eponymous title, sculpted from film reels into a vase-like shape suggestive of a funerary urn, as if the celluloid were clay in the artist’s hands. Stunning in its simplicity, it evokes memory and loss, as does the film from which it was created
Filomeno’s iridescent, brilliant pink silk "Death of a Paranoic Transsexual" uses metaphoric color and surreal imagery to "paint" an implied but not literally stated narrative with finely embroidered, shimmering threads. Filomeno’s rapier wit pits luxuriously beautiful materials and the astonishing craftmanship usually reserved for the finest haute couture, against overtly base scatological and sexual subject matter.
With equally witty stop-dead-in-your-tracks aplomb, Doug Fishbone serves up "Autodoner: Gyro Man," a rotating sculpture of a male head made of gyro meat (dutifully identified as 80% beef and 20% lamb) cooked up on a rotisserie. This work was literally smokin’ as it roasted, dripped and sizzled during the opening reception, adding a not unpleasant olfactory kick to the evening’s visual smorgasborg; art that can truly be devoured by the rapacious art audience.
Brilliant, rampant color is another David Hunt show trademark; in this case pink – which seems to be undergoing its own zeitgeist surge in popularity as the chroma of the times. Christopher Mir’s painting "Keep It Like A Secret" is an example of this. Mir combines painterly brushwork with a graphic, flat ground of neon magenta. Stylized female figures intertwine with surreal, oversized hothouse flowers in a stereotypical fantasy that recalls the covers of dime store novels, cartoon strips and the swirling lines reminiscent of art nouveau posters. Another avid colorist is Gordon Terry, whose "Black Holes, Bohemians, Colonials & Boudoirs" is comprised of poured, marbleized circles of acrylic on a black acrylic background. The title, which alludes to home dec paint chip color charts, nonetheless remains ambiguous; and the work, which is simplistic and clever, recalls with tongue-in-cheek amusement Damien Hirst’s Spin Art paintings.
Amusing as well, although they pack an emotional wallop, are "Gunfight" and "Bloodpour," two videos running concurrently by the collaborative team of Nicole Engelmann and Diana Shpungin that explore violence in media imagery. In the former, two protagonists battle it out in a cartoon-inspired, ridiculous recreation of a gunfight. In the latter, one of them drops to the floor, the other approaches and pours fake blood over the body to set the scene.
In more traditional veins, Suzanne Walters offers "Untitled," an image of abstracted, archetypal animal figures engaged in various sexual activities and positions on a sensually painted ground of olive greens and golden, buttery yellows. Walters paints so well that the subject matter almost gets in the way. Giles Lyon’s "Arsenic Lobster" is quite the opposite of this; a wild spatter painting that incorporates sequins, jewels and spangles. The spatters build up and evolve into organic, intestinal shapes. The title, appropriated from Lorca’s surreal existentialism, refers to the possibility of out of the ordinary things happening on an ordinary day. Bill Saylor’s "Frequency of the Beast" is an expressionist orgy of fiery oranges and reds with the image of a buffalo head and the text "1969 Cayahoga" lettered in crude graffiti style. A statement on environmental pollution, the work refers to a scene the artist witnessed as a child, when the Ohio river burned. Su-en Wong counteracts this with her delicately lyrical painting of St. Theresa’s girl scouts kneeling in a row on a pale green background. The organic shapes and muted colors of Andrew Chesler’s "Kihei" present yet another approach to painting. Chesler’s airbrushed images recall the globules of lava lamps as well as the works of Georgia O’Keefe. They create sensory effects of moments that never existed.
The most overtly baroque work in the exhibition is Mark Dean Veca’s exquisite floor canvas, "Oedipus Wrecked," a heavily detailed and patterned painting with hidden naughty images that could pass for a Persian rug. Placed strategically at the entrance to the gallery, this work greets one as one arrives; a lyrical harbinger of what is about to be discovered within; and a reminder of where painting has been and has yet to go.
