Duet

Curtis Erlinger’s piece in the New Members Show at SOIL is fantastic. Titled Duet, it is a painting and a live projection of that painting facing each other from opposite walls in the gallery. A description of it might be hard to follow so I’ll go step by step.

Erlinger found a negative in his parents’ archives and painted a picture of it. It’s an image his mom took of her friend playing a guitar in her bedroom. The painting is exactly representational of the negative, except that Erlinger painted the eyes differently. The painting is hung on the wall.

About three feet out from the wall is a video camera on a tripod. It’s on, and it’s filming the painting on the wall as well as whatever/whoever crosses the space in front of the painting.

The live video is being projected on a monitor that is hanging on the wall opposite the painting. The video camera is inverting the negative/positive imagery, so that what you see in the monitor is the opposite of what is being filmed. Therefore, a live, inverted version of the painting is facing the actual painting. (Which, remember, is a negative.)

This is complicated and wry, and could be mistaken for one-liner trickery. But there is so much more going on. The live-filming/inversion process is not the punchline of a joke, but the mechanics of perception of a much bigger conversation.

I, and maybe other excitables, could go into orbit finding the duets within this duet. It is a duet of painting and video. Past and present. Positive and negative. And here’s the best one: historical scrutiny and nostalgia.

That’s a Mammy Doll on the shelf behind Erlinger’s mom’s friend, to the left. Unbeknownst to these guitar-playing 60′s youngsters, their Mammy Doll would implicate their inherent racism for decades to come, to be sorted out by their progeny. Erlinger had intended to do a precise representation of the negative, but was so distressed by the Mammy Doll that he had to paint its eyes on the girl with the guitar.

The girl’s new eyes are the Mammy Doll’s eyes; they are the artist’s eyes; they are a check on nostalgia and a self-conscious rendering of history. They are regret, an indictment, and the subject of the riddle. Because in the end, the girl is left with the Mammy’s eyes, and the Mammy Doll is not a Mammy Doll anymore. She’s white.

Bahogkins

Jeff McGrath‘s backspace show (at SOIL) called Bahogkins was Ken Kelly’s pick for the City Art’s First Thursday awards.  I love that a guy who does this

chose this

as his favorite work of the art walk. At the after party Kelly explained for a moment why he chose McGraths’s show, and while I don’t remember exactly what he said, I think he touched on that weird, refreshing limbo this work puts you in. There is no safety net of easy sophistication, though the sophistication is there. There is also humor, and also just an honest peek into McGrath’s work and play. These critters are not trying to be anything they’re not, and what they are is exuberant and true, but undefinable. Are they forest boogers, perched on logs for you to find and admire? Or Hobbit turds, as the show title and font choice might suggest? They are friendly, messy little things that are almost embarrassing with their show of affection. Thanks, Bahogkins.

A gay day at SOIL

It was a hot, sweaty Saturday Talk at SOIL last week when we new members talked briefly about our work. I could be wrong, but I think SOIL might have been all hetero before this round of homos joined this year.  It was nice/interesting to see common yearnings in our work. All three of the gay members present for the talk (one bear couldn’t make it) are making work about our sexual identities, histories, and relationships. And, all three of us are using somewhat abstract means to do this. Also, I think talking comfortably about these things in a gallery setting is relatively new to all of us.

Chris Buening talked about how Mad Dog is a kind of abstract “portrait” of his fifteen-year-old self drunk on a date with his much older boyfriend.

Derrick Jefferies found the body for Anatomy in cinnamon and mint chewing gum, stretched and and molded together to shape sinews and nakedness.

I’m using The Song of Songs from the Bible as a way to paint the trajectory of my love song to my wife and son.

Related: Erin Shafkind’s take on the Saturday Talk.