July 8 to August 12, 2016
170 Suffolk Street (between Houston and Stanton streets)
New York, 212 274 0064

Sticky, squishy, felty, rubbery. Plush, plump, porous.

Part cactus, part snowman-shaped Peep candy, a bulbous form stands a shy distance from the front doors. Shaded a dusty aquamarine, slightly blanched like the surface of freshly cut silicone, three cylindrical volumes perch one atop the other. In tumid contours, this shape vaguely gestures to that the class of object that contains canine chew toys, children’s building blocks, and paraphernalia for the sexually adventurous. Jayson Musson infuses Pedestrian (2014) with unexpected life, bringing the object to the physical scale of the human form. In the placement of this work, curator Feelings (whose book on soft art was published last year by Rizzoli) prepares us for the wealth of sensations to come, abstracted in objects that become bodily in their engagement of ours.

Temptingly tactile, Justin Adian’s works echo gestures that feel intimately human; in Yabba Dabba Doo (2016) a mitted hand crunches closed, while 2^nd Cousins (2016) gives a sidling sway that closes the awkward distance between a baby-boy-blue rectangle and a girlishly pink wave. Spongy, enamel-coated forms cling to gallery walls, creating pastel pop-out patterns detailed by crinkled material and real-life shadow. John Chamberlain’s Untitled (1967) seems to complete these flirtatious motions on the second floor of the gallery, comprised of two partial spheres that kiss, tenderly embracing to become whole.

Guy Goodwin’s cardboard cushions resemble the dotted patterning and depressions of upholstery, an allusion borne out in titles such as Springtime for Henry Grimes (2016). However, we are made sharply aware of the distinction between content and form as Goodwin’s cardboard amoebas stiffly sail through stippled seas. Weirdly plush in volume, these rigid surfaces model structures that they cannot possibly match, distorting internal integrity to achieve the uncanny quality of plastic food or fake hair.

The humble moving blankets that compose Sam Moyer’s series of Night Moves (2009) are impeccably folded, the original patterning of gray and neutral-toned expanses are divided by neat seams, joining one region to another. Regular, orderly ripples traverse each square plane. As with Goodwin’s unyielding bubbles, Moyer’s compositions fall eerily flat, less interested as they are in tactile pleasure, than in clean aestheticism.

Retaliating against hard lines and geometry, Lynda Benglis’s Untitled (1970) makes the fluid discrete in a colorful spill that fails to mar the floor of the gallery. Uneven blocks of color seep stickily in this flow frozen in diffusion, movement caught in permanence. By contrast, Erwin Wurm’s Internal (2016) dissolves that which should have integrity, warping the sturdy exoskeleton of a toaster.

Samara Golden’s pillowy figurative sculptures are tattooed with patterns that feel distinctly, embarrassingly American. Here is the body politic, striated by squiggly bacon strips, foreheads emblazoned with law books and hammering gavels. If we sit too hard and long on the couch — watching conventions, of course — will we too soak up its dull, grandmotherly floral ornamentation? The American flag flourishes across arms upraised in the pose of one of Picasso’s demoiselles. Eyes, painted over these designs and illuminated by a track of fierce gallery lights, look at us coyly sideways. Walk around to other side, and these same limp forms are illuminated by a blacklight that causes a very different relief to manifest: glowing skeletons, skulls, and bones fluoresce. Yet, for these two fronts, there is no substance, no interior.

Airy, insubstantial, empty, hollow, these various works find life in the inanimate and the object in the human. There may not be a whole lot in the way of content here, but that is proudly proclaimed by the exhibition title. This is about substance, but not the intellectual kind; texture is the name of the game and we are awarded with a crunchy, crinkly, plushy show that gives to our gaze as easily and as generously as it would under the weight of a hand. Touch with your eyes. I dare you to feel something.

The post Soft-Core: A Show of Sculpture at Rachel Uffner appeared first on artcritical.

July 1 to August 8, 2015
106 N 1st Street (at Berry Street)
Brooklyn, 718 218 7148

It may be true that God is dead. We find ourselves in a time and place where we’ve been freed from contextual restraints in our expression. As Friedrich Nietzsche described the nature of morality, rejecting an objective truth in favor of the subjective decision to determine what is good, evil, and everything in between, the god figure, or master, has become obsolete, the power of ateliers is faded, and overarching movements have become unrecognizable. Although the task of creating art may be daunting when facing the abyss of ever-developing ideas and technologies, it is not at all impossible to generate meaning. And that is what “Freedom Culture,” curated by Graham Collins, is about. Featuring the work of nearly 40 artists, this exhibition, held at Williamsburg’s Journal Gallery, ties together an array of styles, media, and ideas, which result in an equivocal yet solid statement about present culture.

It raises the question of how we navigate the ambiguity of freedom in our decision making process without an objective aesthetic-moral-contextual-etc. compass to guide the way. Collins tackles this issue by blurring the line between many categories: literal and figurative, painting and sculpture, as well as object and illusion. Brent Holland Baker’s text painting, Untitled (2015) — with the words “SMALL PARADISE AND BIG BIG HELL” arranged from top to bottom on a textured, alizarin crimson ground — offers an explicit statement with an open-ended meaning encapsulated by a specific aesthetic experience. It is hung next to an Ida Ekblad piece, Not Titled (2015), in which collaged drawings allude to an abstract world where plasticity and flatness interact with each other. In another room, Elizabeth Murray’s playful, colorful shaped-canvas painting, Truth, Justice, and Comics #1 (1990), finds a foil in Elizabeth Jaeger’s handsome and serious sculptures made of steel, ceramic, maple, and granite.

The seemingly incongruous set of ideas present in this grouping speaks to the nature of finding meaning. Without over-determined meanings, the individual is solely responsible for her own experience and interpretation of the work at hand. Oftentimes, the process of coming to a decision isn’t so simple as landing on one side of a dichotomy, making freedom a little frustrating or even frighteningly unknown. Collins doesn’t just want you to wonder if whether Baker’s piece is a painting or mere text; by placing it next Ekblad’s collage, in a room separated from Murray and Jaeger’s work, we see that freedom is a subjective, metastatic interpretation.

There is no formula, but somehow every work in the show communicates with the space as a whole, while maintaining its autonomy. Inadvertently, this addresses the cultural obsession with individuality and the pervasive need to assert one’s uniqueness. We do all sorts of things to maintain such distinction: hair dye, brand-name fashions, customized sneakers and phones. The collection of unique entities in this show can be read as a metaphor for the variety show we participate in every day. Simply choosing to assert ourselves is what makes life unique and meaningful.

Collins has created a matrix of two-dimensional work and sculpture for the viewer to navigate on their own terms. The entire gallery is activated so that one cannot consume any single piece without sensing another in the periphery. A stark conceptual piece living in the front of the gallery, Oyster Split (pets and cops) (2015), by Andy Meerow, consists of the words “pets” and “cops” printed, respectively, on two white canvases. Its austere presence pushes the viewer to the mysterious photographs — containing ephemeral, in some cases dark imagery, Such as Sam Moyer’s Willie III, (2009) which portrays an obscured figure bathed in complete darkness — hanging in the back room, before being pulled back into the center of the gallery where most of the action is. A viewer can go from thinking about politics, to aesthetics, to philosophy, to what was for lunch as she wanders among the work. Like an ant, the viewer’s physical and mental path resembles the show’s five untitled drawings by David Adamo, which look like they were made by following the path of a tiny insect, becoming nests of indecipherable text.

In this space we sense our small, unique presence in an endless network of happenings. Though our freedom to go one way or another may be arbitrary, the way we communicate with each other in the process can be as meaningful as we make it.

The post “Freedom Culture” at The Journal Gallery appeared first on artcritical.