GROUP SHOW: ASTERISK GALLERY • CLEVELAND,
OHIO
When Anna Sui announced that her spring 2001 collection
was based on her recollections of the Mudd Club, fashion followers
generally breathed a sigh, as if to say either “not another
revival” or “at least she’s doing the good part
of the ‘80s.” “Doing the good part” is largely
a remanufacturing of memories; a personal zeitgeist formed by objects
and places, and often the recollection of an object within a compelling
space. Like break dancing, the gallery spaces of the ‘80s
and early ‘90s seem naively charming and lacking in the media-slick
skin that’s now de rigeur, therefore making them desirable
models for the newest generation of gallerists. My own collective
genus loci from the past two decades has been shaped by the venues
that have managed to combine a Steinean “there there”
atmosphere with group presentations that were my equivalent of a
fantasy dinner party. Included amongst these would be group shows
at Exit Art, 303 Gallery, even certain Carnegie International Biennials.
Asterisk Gallery can be added to the above list.
The recent group show that inaugurated the gallery
focuses on object-oriented art that recontextualizes the gallery’s
space as a container. Featuring Mike Dee’s video installation
and video still photography, Jean Patterson’s shorthand word
sculptures, Robert Levine’s handcrafted objects, Bill Radawec’s
paint-chip paintings, and Jason Lee’s circuit-like photographs,
the show finds each artist reconfiguring a cultural or common object
and presenting it within a format that either combines or refers
to electronic age glamour along with the handcrafted. An obsessively
intensive process seems to be the modifying factor that unites these
dinner guests.
Jason Lee’s photographic installation “6
of 1, Half Dozen of the Other” occupies a strategic niche
in the entry to the gallery. Acting more as a maitre d’ than
a bouncer, the complex network of constructed metal light boxes
compels with its photographic images of claymation-like cowboys
and Indians. Lee has an uncanny way of humanizing the most sterile
of objects; inside the gallery another circuit of light boxes focuses
on images of pink and flesh toned urinal pucks. Within the structure
of a mass of not-so-slick steel boxes and electrical cables, the
installation calls to mind more a basement workshop than a clinical
X-ray bank.
Also utilizing electronic media but focusing on
the human side of cultural objectification is Mike Dee’s “Trial
and Tenderness.” A hanging
two-inch LCD color television screen plays a sped-up clip
of Otis Redding performing in a manner that references the singer’s
alleged cocaine addiction. Beneath the monitor on the floor lies
a tiny paper bra which reinforces the viewer’s position as
an “audience member” in the gallery. Dee’s work
seems intent on interrogating the cultural construction of a performer
and his performance. Equally intriguing is Ringo’s Ruby Ring,
a close-up video still photograph of Ringo Starr’s hand from
A Hard Day’s Night. Dee’s encyclopedic knowledge of
the aesthetics of music and performance saves him from becoming
the party bore; like his mentor and fellow video artist Glen Seator,
Dee creates manipulated images that are “stored” within
the packaging of technology. His work calls to mind early Smiths
album covers that capitalized on retro-appeal cultural icons through
second generation reproduction.
The seduction of form and material is immediately
recognizable in Los Angeles artist Jean Patterson’s black
vinyl anxious, fear, stress, tension. Not immediately recognizable,
the title’s words in shorthand configure the shape of
the soft filled sculptures. Her work literally reshapes the
Conceptual and often dry word art of the early ‘90s by transforming
words into graphically fetching objects. Both the black vinyl and
the pale pink Plexiglas of flower, flower recall the smooth sexiness
of Modernist surfaces with the recent mainstream popularity of fetish
gear; think suburban sex shop meets Mies lounger. The retro ‘80s
associations of the words she chooses to objectify also seem quaint
and pre-millennial. Concentrating entirely on the calligraphic or
formal pattern in Patterson’s work, though, is to overlook
the comment she is making on the implications of technologically
reproducing or altering language.
Both Robert Levine and Bill Radawec reinterpret
common objects that are the dowdy cousins to Patterson’s sexy
bon mots. For some time Los Angeles based Levine has painstakingly
recast objects; in this case, scattered throughout the gallery are
painted, carved wood renditions of bowling pins, cans of spray paint,
a brown bag, and other objects that are the antithesis of the Gucci
ad/Glass House art object. At the end of the day, his objects seem
less like a redux of Johns’ two beer cans and more like a
parody of boys’ toys (the “True Value” logo is
practically a gay-appropriated icon á la a California Highway
Patrol badge). Radawec brings to the show his bold multi-colored
panels which use the named colors from hardware shop paint-chip
samples as the basis for a Conceptual color theory. Incorporating
the erotic surface and form of Donald Judd’s boxes but with
none of the macho Minimalist angst, Radawec’s rerendering
of these flat objects works surprisingly well. Radawec’s act
of “imagining” colors based on words alone is as cathartic
and transformative as any of the other ideas presented in this show.
The placement of works within the space is particularly successful,
and the roughly hewn gallery environment provides an edgy aesthetic
to match the work. Bravo, Asterisk!
Eric Susyne
Cleveland, Ohio
2001