Monday, March 28, 2011

Cheap thrills at DOMY's "Chisel Story Rust"

by Dean Liscum

I like Warhol. I like found shit. I like non-intuitive associations/connections. Thus, I like some works of art for no other reason than I like them.

The show "Chisel Story Rust," which thanks to Amanda Jones and Chad Hopper, I now know is an anagram of "history cluster," has got a couple of these candidates for me. The raw materials for this show were bought at yard sales, traded for at swap meets, and collected from the artists' lives. In other words, the pieces all have a history even though that history may be unknowable. The artists do not enhance or adulterate these items. They only arrange and present them.

Think Duchamp, think Warhol, think photography, think Borge's Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.

It plays out simply for we the viewers. Faced with objects that are re-presented in a context other than the one in which they were created or for which they were meant to be used, we apply our own associations from the history cluster or clusterfuck that's been our lives so far, and enjoy. Not genius, but occasionally pleasurable.

Here are my guilty pleasures:


Amanda Jones and Chad Hopper, Double Backward, mixed media, 2010

(I love Candy Corns. Someone could put them in a jar of piss and call it art and I'd bite.)


Amanda Jones and Chad Hopper, Party Monster, mixed media, 2010


Amanda Jones and Chad Hopper, Mutant Mobile, mixed media, 2010

(Best viewed lying on your back near a can of spilled beer)


Amanda Jones and Chad Hopper, Shout Bouquet, mixed media, 2010

No comments:

Post a Comment