Doldrums,
schmoldrums --
Brooklyn galleries
sizzle throughout
the summer. Half a
dozen venues have
put serious thought
into their
off-season
offerings, with a
little help from
artists, freelance
curators and their
friends.
Brooklyn Fire
Proof, which
opened a few years
ago in a raw space
on Richardson Street
on the northwestern
cusp of
Williamsburg, recently enjoyed a
makeover and is
looking downright
spiffy (though its
still a little hard
to find). The
current show is
"Laying Doggo,"
organized by Yale
MFA candidate Ann Toebbe and
mainly featuring the
work of other
Yalies.
One exception is
Ohio State alumna Stacy Fisher, whose work
shares with the
show's other
participants an
interest in the
examination of
mundane, archetypal
imagery -- the
generic, threadbare
visual vocabulary of
popular culture but
avoids trafficking
in clich and wrings
some genuine emotion
from the combination
of generic motifs.
Most of the pieces
in this seven-artist
show are priced for
the entry-level
collector, in the
$500 to $2,500
range.
BFP founder and
director Burr
Dodd has
no problem ceding
control to outside
curators; indeed, he
seems delighted that
his little corner of
the world has taken
on a life of its
own. Next up for the
gallery is "August,"
organized by artist Dan Kopp, followed in
September by
"Intimacy,"
assembled by the
ubiquitous writer
and curator David Gibson.
Fisher's work was
seen last spring in
"Up and Off the
Wall," at the
nonprofit Dumbo
Arts Center.
DAC has a generous
space, a helpful
staff, and a bit of
difficulty mounting
truly convincing
shows. There are a
couple of stand-outs
in every exhibition,
but frequently the
curatorial conceit
is fleshed out with
mediocre work
distinguished by
nothing more than
traits that happen
to support it. In
such a thesis-driven
selection, the tail
wags the dog.
DAC invites curators
in to do their thing
with Brooklyn
artists, and the
current show, "A
Stereoscopic
Vision," on view
through Sept. 19,
2004, is curated by Melissa Chiu, museum
director of the Asia
Society. It succeeds
better than any
other recent shows
at DAC in large part
because of the
fruitful dialogue
between objects. The
model of Brancusi's
studio packed with
towering sculptures
in Joe
Fig's photoBrancusi
1928 (2003)
takes on new
resonance in light
of Bird's
Eye View (2004), a floor piece by Yoko Inoue wherein
a collection of
mirror balls,
doilies, glass jars
and pink-glazed
cast-ceramic
versions of vaguely
familiar, cartoonish
big-beaked birds
replicate themselves
into infinity.
Multiplicity is an
attribute of much of
the work here,
including PedroCruz-Castros Useless Objects (2001-03),
a collection of
plaster-covered and
black-painted
household objects
arrayed deadpan on a
plinth. The same
items -- still-life
components without
the life -- are
rendered in hazy,
romantic charcoal on
ledger-book pages,
and in a crisp laser
print wall chart,
underscoring the
sense of an
inventory or
accounting. The
artist is an art
handler by trade.
The emotional weight
of things is
expressed
differently in the
work of Susan
Graham,
who contributes two
show-stoppers: Empty Rooms(2000) a slide
carousel slowly and
hypnotically
churning through its
loop of
black-and-white
images of empty
rooms, which may be
models, punctuated
by just a few of
lamps and mirrors in
a hotel corridor and
a bedroom; and the
exquisite Squall (2002). In this tiny piece,
projector and
projected are linked
in a tortured tango
worthy of the
hammer-locked
protagonists of a
Michael Mann movie.
The artist's
background in craft
(she was a
recipient, in 2003,
of a NYFA
craft fellowship)
informs her
awareness that the
medium is, at the
least, a
considerable part of
the message. Most of
the work in the show
is for sale, priced
in the $200-$4,000
range.
Drew Heitzler and Flora Wiegmann of Champion Fine Art, located at 281 North 7th Street, have brought their clear-headed focus to the scene for the last year or so. If the address sounds familiar to you Brooklyn hands, it might be because that's the building where Flameburned briefly, a short while ago. Champion's innovative program consists of a series of 20 group shows organized entirely by artists -- the likes of Reed Anderson, Carol Bove and Steven Parrino -- invited to "champion" the work of a group of their fellow artists.
Champions current
exhibition is
"Escapism: a Viable
Political
Alternative,"
assembled by Fia Backstrom. The
gallery walls have
been painted gray
and the lights
turned low for the
occasion; the
theatrical
presentation
flatters Two
Moons (2003,
$6,000),
photographer Roe Etheridge's beautiful
double-take of a
three-quarter moon,
and facilitates its
visceral, pre-verbal
connection with Darth, the
topographically
rich,
papier-mach-modified
CD rack contributed
byJessica Jackson
Hutchins.
(This piece was sold
prior to the show,
and appears by
arrangement with the
artist's dealer, Derek Eller.) As
always at Champion,
a makeshift
catalogue ("printed
ephemera")
accompanies the
exhibition.
Visitors have until
this Friday, Aug.
20, 2004, to see the
show, and the
gallery, for that
matter, as Champion
relocates to Los
Angeles at the end
of the summer. Drew
tells me that he and
Flora plan to return
to New York in a
couple of years.
Here's hoping they
land back in the
county of Kings.
Brooklyns art
neighborhood also
recently lost the
redoubtable Becky Smith and
her edgy Bellwether gallery, as well as the
charming and
whip-smart Monya
Rowe, to the
siren song of
Chelsea's throngs. Mazel tov and bonne chance, ladies!
Fortunately, the Brooklyn scene is endlessly fertile and constantly regenerating. Down on Grand Street, Stay Gold has been presenting shows since January, and founder/directors Anna Sheffield andFarika tell me they're booked through spring of 2005. The comfortable, casual space, which fronts a clutch of working artists' studios and thus exudes something of a communal air, plays host through Sept. 5 to a high-voltage gathering of antiwar and other protest posters under the rubric "Yo! What Happened to Peace?" The project, which has been presented in different forms in Tokyo and Boston, features the work of about 100 graphic artists and is coordinated by L.A.-based designerJohn Carr. This agitprop is for sale: edition sizes vary widely but prices are generally below $100.
Speaking of gold, Roebling Hall, the borough's gold standard of lively and intelligent cultural critique, adds its voice to the chorus of art-world resistance to the Bush administration's policies and propaganda. Now, putting together a "political" show from among this gallery's artists and associates was probably slightly less taxing for directors Joel Beckand Christian Viveros-Faun than a day at the beach; nevertheless, "Bush League" is an opportunity to see some fine painterly polemics, like Dan Fords oil-on-canvas painting The Burning of the National Library, Baghdad; Troops Observing Looters (2004), an update of Turner's Burning of the Houses of Parliament. The price is $10,000.On a lighter note, Guy Richard Smit's daydream recastings of New York Times front pages, done in watercolor on paper and dated to 2004 ($2,500 each), demonstrate that satire embraces even the absurd. The show is on view through Sept. 6, so that adventurous, Billyburg-bound delegates to the Republican National Convention (who may, after all, get lost looking for a certain overpriced steakhouse) will have an opportunity to take it in.If you want to do something besides kvetch about the current administration in Washington, go to United for Peace.org.
STEPHEN
MAINE is
an artist and writer
who lives in
Brooklyn.