MOLO POMO & ME (a day at the galleries)

With a new year comes the quest for new experiences. I read the recent Time Out article on the new satellite galleries that would comprise a kind of art mall in the old Tunnel nightclub. My curiosity was aroused and I thought it might be a kick to have a look. Each of these satellites is packed into little exhibition spaces not unlike the booths you find at the large traveling art fairs. In fact that's exactly the precedent for these spaces. Art dealers seem to be taking the financial successes of these fairs as a cue for what the buying public expects…galleries modeled after the art fairs - cubicle display for the cash and carry retailer. Cha-Ching!

I went into all of these spaces looking for some fun and frolic. Mostly I was confronted with student-ish art and middle-aged painting. You know what I'm talking about. Goopy glow in the dark paint smeared on boxes with collaged pictures and text, thank you very much. Half baked academic abstraction in sellable retail sizes. Navel gazing videos. Lumpy bits of arty detritus stuck together with silicon, staple guns and liquid nails sprawled across the gallery floors or teetering against track lit corners. Clumsy realist painting, clumsy cibachromes and ham fisted drawing in that scrawling, itchy, east village 1984 way usually documenting one's ambiguous sexuality, nerd anger or psychic pain. Yep more of the same, same, and same.

The atm Gallery, aptly named for today's cash dispenser art business, is showing Christopher Deeton, a competent journeyman painter, making historically absorbed painterly abstractions. The press release, however, is a trip. After laying the pipe for a confrontation with spirituality we are "confronted" with this line, "…These are paintings that confront our perils and terror with charged calm, their stygian atavism born of feral vigilance." Ok, I like my prose as purple as the next guy, but this is a challenge to throw down.
Firstly the only terror or peril I was "confronted” with was from the rather chilly receptionist. Secondly I am not sure how one charges calm, or even if that's at all a possibility. Does one clock in by the hour or is it a per diem sort of thing? Imagine how embarrassed I felt thinking that these paintings were skilled humorous work-offs of Morris Louis and his painterly techniques. Same pouring, same raw canvas, same bleeding edges, only done in black to make it hefty, the poured forms more illustrational; a postmodern, imagistic MoLo.

What began in my mind as a witty, visual and clever play has now become a confrontation with "stygian atavism born of feral vigilance." Deeton has been around long enough to know some of the rudiments of recent art history. Surely he could acknowledge his sources in the PR, especially when the precedent is so well known. Then he could explain how he makes it different. I mean if an elephant is in the room then you might as well say hello. Hell, maybe he really is that intense and spiritual. If so, the work on view doesn't begin to broach those fervid issues. If however, they are the work of someone deeply involved with the color field movement, someone intent on confronting the legacy of the painterly sixties, then they might be getting close. Postmodern strategies do not work if you are playing it straight. I don't mind that the galleries' press releases are intent on grinding an axe, but please shower the sparks in the opposite direction.

This very thing reminds me of Courbet's painting of a young woman's 19th century "private area" (which is much less "cultivated" than our 21st century ones - pre-Brazilian.) In this work one can see the obvious inspiration, the painstaking and difficult day in and day out work, and the final aesthetic capitulation to painterly realism. Courbet, deeply believing in his own mythology, brushed the paint into the damp nether regions of a gawking visual history. Then expanding on the theme with all the subtlety of a chiffon nighty, he named the painting "Birth of the World!" (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet!) Unfortunately, this text, no matter how catchy, could not gild this lily. It is exactly what it is, and it has, through its storied career, raised a few hackles, among other things. Ah yes, the sheer pleasure of standing in front of this painting, hour upon hour, ogling the color and form, contemplating the…oh…excuse me, I've gone off on a tangent. What you say you do and what you show me should be the same. Pictures may lie to tell the truth as Pablo P. nearly said, but without a doubt, words lie all the time. The image made through illusion leads one to a truth. (I think Pablo may have been lying, who can tell?)

I'm very happy that folks are showing and selling! I think it's great that artists can communicate with a wide audience of receptive consumers! But my concern is that painting has worn into this moldering visual track of textual crap and academic optical posturing. Because someone believes something doesn't make it visually so for the rest of us. The ideas in an aesthetic must be laid out first and foremost in the visual experience of the works themselves. A viewer, any viewer, must be able to SEE what you are saying. MoLo's pictorial strength comes from the technique. The beauty of his paintings is in the happy outcome of the circumstances of their production. How he made the work determined the work's meaning. "Stygian atavism" does not happen because one is ferally vigilant, if it happens at all. Are your paintings visually unique? Is your aesthetic intention apparent? Do these works express something about your experience, and do you impart that to us, your audience? Techniques are great and are tools for us all to use, but those tools must be bent to one's own will and express one's own experience. If the first thing that comes to mind when someone sees your painting is another well known artist, then you haven't pushed your concerns hard enough or your punch line about that other artist is falling flat.

I think the art world, especially painting, is suffering terrifically from Postmodernism. What started out as a smart critique of sources has lapsed into an easy way out. We've reached a level of style saturation that has left us swamped in precedent. There are few new visual ideas because we have let ourselves become aesthetically comfortable with making optical references. I don't see the discontent with the academy. I don't see the challenge to those who are in power. At the beginning of the 17th Century Caravaggio was sued by Baglione for calling him names and plastering filthy pictures of him all around town. Michele not only confronted the aesthetic world, but also the slack, self satisfied bunch that drove the art wagon through the Vatican treasury. It's great to indulge in all these useless panel discussions, unending parties, congratulatory openings and fabulous get-togethers, but where is the real visual action!?!

Which brings me back to the gallery experiment at the former warehouse nightclub. Will it be a success? Only if it can present something different and exciting, something to catch our imagination! Otherwise it'll be back to the art fair road show. It's not enough for these galleries to unload their back rooms, sell off their overstock, or give contractual shows to gallery artists that aren't selling well. That is simply a plan for a tax write off. I challenge these gallerists, right here and right now! Get off your asses and find something great, or at the very least, exciting! Quit sitting and waiting for someone to fall in your lap! As far as I can tell most of you are holed up in your back offices, surfing the net and sending your minions out for Starbucks. You've PR'd the experiment; you've got my attention. Hell, I'll traipse through the icy New York City cold (as I did today) to come see your handiwork. If it's good, I'll talk it up. Look, anyone can hire a space. All that takes is cash. Bring on the visual content and leave the text out of it!