Art Review
No Name
A disco ball moves around a room – while a projector flashes the words material/immaterial. Is this another night at the club? No, is the latest art show at the No Name Gallery. A collection of 40 artists, so diverse it does make you head spin. The curators’ notes that the show explores the co-existence of the corporeal and the ephemeral in art” doesn’t quite fit since the subject matter in the show is all over the place. But the curators’ are correct about the binary aspect of the show. In viewing the show I found a definite split between works more conceptual in subject matter and form and those more tied to realism and romantic in subject. It is indeed a “meditation on the nature of representation, media and reality but not all of those things and sometimes none of those. What it does give you, is a representation of talented local artists with something to say. Kathleen McCarthy’s “The Structure of Empty Space or what does the void look like” is a conceptual piece of microfilaments strung around the room in a plane, creating horizontal and vertical lines that divide the space into squares. Ann Lynman’s pieces in a room looking like a lab or the inside of the body. Her pieces Hyperopia and Stystalic describe different medical conditions. The pieces constructed of polyester and the materials, reforms the body as disease, the viewer has ability to touch – one is a box, looking part of the interior, mouth or anus, and another resembles a bladder. Abraham Renko “Dues Ex Machina” is another conceptual piece – constructed of parachute material, lead, rubber, ball, rope, tape, salt and light. Ball sits in the middle of chute with material which is gathered in pieces by clothes pins (mother reference- our world, ball – the earth. Effect and Essence by Patrick Maun, stones hanging down by steel, again the reference to earth, to life to us to humans, hanging precariously. E. Maria Velasco, borrowing from 70’s to make body parts out of soap, dissembled head, body broken up sink filled with soap, more material from where we come where we must return. The more romantic or realist pieces take on a more postmodern tone since they consider old ideas in a postmodern world. Melba Prices’s portraits of women titled consecutively as Expulsion, Beginning the Descent, Sometimes I Close My Eyes and Buok use traditional materials of watercolor to represent image of the figure from an earlier time. The women dressed in old evening gown. John Largaspada in his series of inkjet prints collages takes what appear to be old images and distorts them to present an idea of reality twisted by memory. A small boy is show in one with a Francis Bacon distorted face with still pictures of parents. John Benton Untitled is a series oil painting on 78 records. Here is a combination of what appears to look like cartoon versions of European life, naturalistic settings on recording material that died out in the 40’s. What this means, I don’t know. Amy Toscani’s is the crossover piece, there is a connection to the artists relying on concept but also ties to a romantic idea. The installation piece consists of a gyroscope, a reconstructed old canary cage and old toy. The gyroscope has embedded in it souvenir dinner trays embedded in the surface of the gyroscope