The Big Show at Lawndale, part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

The ubiquitous Emily Sloan plays a little game with the whole format of the show. Her Kenmore piece is, in itself, a curatorial act. It's as if she is staking a claim for curation as artistic act. And she is playing on the tradition of tiny art spaces. (Think of Sharon Engelstein's Gallery One Three Seven or most famously, Duchamp's Box in a Valise.) In presenting the refrigerator as an art space, she "smuggles" in all the artworks on it and in it.

Valerie Powell, Outdoor Sculpture Garden, plastic and magnets, 2010 (?)

So Valerie Powell's magnets, which are similar to other work she has done, become the "outdoor sculpture garden" for this lilliputian art space. Inside, you have things like this tiny minimalist sculpture made of butter.

Loli Fernandez-A, Homage to Judd, butter, 2010

(Its geometric regularity recalls Judd, but its material recalls Beuys.)

There were a few abstract paintings I liked. I mentioned Joseph Cohen, or course. I also enjoyed these two very different pieces.

Myke Venable, Violet/Rose/Silver, acrylic on convas, 2009

John Tapper, Sure, acrylic latex paint, ink and paper on canvas, 2009

The angled geometries of Myke Venable's piece  appeal to me like a Robert Mangold painting, and I like the Philip Guston-like mark-making in Tapper's.

I'm going to close with a few disparate, unrelated pieces that I like from the show. There is not story that can be told here--and that is essentially true for the exhibit as a whole. Themes, tendencies, stories that emerge (naked ladies!) are countered or undermined by other tendencies (abstractions, feminist art). That's what you can expect from The Big Show. The work offered to the curator doesn't allow him to tell a story (beyond a story of plurality or chaos), even if he had any inclination to do so.

Hayden Fosdick, Sorrow and Despair Grip the Moon, collage, 2010

I bought a piece of Fosdick's from a show at Gallery 1724 earlier this year. His collages are simple and clever. This one really exemplifies "simple" and "clever"--but I want to also call attention to the excellent design that looks almost like early Russian avant garde design.

Joel Hernandez, Carmelita, archival inkjet print, 2008

Joel Hernandez had two great photographic portraits in the show. His subjects are shown in their own environments (I assume) and really come through as real people with constructed identities. The photos play in the fuzzy space between authenticity and artifice.

Anthony Day, Total Life Saver, floats and airbrush, 2010

Anthony Day, Total Life Saver, floats and airbrush (from above), 2010

This last piece looks like the classic "shit, the deadline's tomorrow and I haven't even started!" piece. (I did a few of those as an art student.) Still, sitting on its clean white plinth, it looks really good. And that's all ya need.(I have to say I like this better than his styrofoam pieces.)

Box 13 Bullet Points

Box 13 is a storefront artspace with studios. Located on Harrisburg near the corner of Wayside, it seems physically far from the Houston art world (the Frenetic Theater is relatively close by, though). Harrisburg is lively and urban, but decidedly working class and Mexican-American. I wonder what Box 13's neighbors think about them.



So when I heard they were displaying a Stephanie Toppin painting, I went to check it out. I liked her work in $timulus.


Oneself by Oneself, Stephanie Toppin, 2009

• The piece is huge.
• Evidently, the piece at Diverse Works and this one are part of a single larger piece.

Oneself by Oneself detail, Stephanie Toppin, 2009

• The bigger piece is a "self-portrait" in the form of a timeline.
  
• It might be better to call it a "memoir".
• But of course, no one would be able to figure out the subject of this large abstract work by looking at it.

Oneself by Oneself detail, Stephanie Toppin, 2009

• Instead, one sees a brightly colored abstraction that rewards close looks.

Oneself by Oneself detail, Stephanie Toppin, 2009

• Her handling of paint and colors remind me of early Melissa Miller.
  
• I love this work.

Black and White Picket Fence, Emily Sloan, 2009

• Emily Sloan had three pieces that I thought were cool.
  
• The show was somewhat lacking in identifying labels, so I don't know what they were called.
• One could call them "Picket Fence," "G Cone," and "Castors" I guess.
• Update: I have titles for her pieces, as you can see beneath the photos.
  

Traveling Bauhaus R, Emily Sloan, 2009

• These sculptural works kind of belong to the category of works that can be described thus:
• No Artistic Talent Was Required to Make Them
• But They Are So Intriguing and Visually Interesting, They Must Be Art

Turf, Emily Sloan, 2009

• This is not meant as an insult.
• After all, Duchamp proved that this approach could be art back in 1913.
• It becomes incumbent on the viewer, aided by contextual clues, to decide what is art.
• Postmodernism contended that this was always true.
• See for example 'La Mort de l'auteur'* by Roland Barthes.
• And in my eyes, Emily Sloan's work is cool.
  

Stampede, Kia Niell, 2009

• I guess the same could be said about the flying buffaloes of Kia Niell

Stampede, Kia Niell, 2009

• I liked how the shape of the piece changed as you walked up the stairs.

from "Zen and the Indulgence of Environmental Destruction," Anthony Day, 2009

• The notion of building things out of the interesting "negative" shapes of styrofoam packing material is not a bad one.
• But with the weak coloring (stryrofoam is notoriously hard to paint) and scattershot approach, Anthony Day's totems have little impact.

back yard of Box 13

• Remember Kathryn Kelley? I think Box 13's back yard might be her studio.
• All in all. Box 13 is one hell of an art space. I'm embarrassed that I had never heard of it before this weekend.
  

*That's French.