Bullet Space is currently showing "Mob", a varied collection of works that address both the processes and forms of de-constructive aesthetics. Many of the artists employ appropriation strategies or what Guy Debord of the Situationist International termed detournement. While a concurrent retrospective of Sherrie Levine's famously appropriative art holds sway in a sepulchral installation at the Whitney, these artists seem more interested in prying meaning from a generalized pre-occupation with popular spectacle, and therefore seem more aligned with Debord. His definition of detournement implies an active resistance to ,and upsetting of, spectatorial zombiehood, in order to expose the mechanisms of the modern culture machine.
In the gallery press release, Dixon Mills writes:
"The show still functions as a coherent meta-narrative of sorts, a Tower of Babel in which all the participants speak different languages but nevertheless agree upon their general intention to cause a disruption in relaxed spectatorship, a zoned -out reception."
Martynka Wawrzyniak and Richard Kern puncture the surface sheen of fashion imagery in video and photography respectively. Alexandra Rojas echoes the compulsive overkill of Warzyniak's "Chocolate" video loop with a video of her own, smashing white panels of plywood, which are on adjacent display. In a related aesthetic, Scott Lawrence uses the second skin of clothing to create tableaux that abstract bodily gesture.
Tom McGlynn deconstructs popular and corporate logos, in paintings and prints and T-shirts, to discover the singular "anti" buried within their collective commodity theses. Will Boone offers a negative critique of his own by pairing Black Flag with Black Sabbath and Black Panther logos in the same print. Suzanne Broughel addresses issues of black and white in her work that includes a mandala-like piece made from different "flesh" colored band-aids, while Matthew White's cloud of purple goo hovers above like concretized malaise.
Leo Fitzpatrick's collages from old, yellowed, paperbacks evoke nostalgia for longing in an abject poetry of projected desire. Walter Sipser's drawings seem similar in their humorous yet fatalistic awareness of the impossibility of knowing fundamental truths in a fundamentally shallow society. Quimetta Perle's bejeweled video -eye could be either passively observing the show from the vestibule wall or surveilling the event. Gunars Prande's documentations of erased graffiti walls witness the gagging of customary individual gesture on private property, while Noc 167 represents as as a progenitor of the New York graffiti movements dating back to the 1970's.
Perhaps Andrew Castrucci's "Oxycontin" painting indicates the typical somatic response to the "Society of the Spectacle", a situation that the rest of the artists in this show seem so furiously intent on unpacking.
Oona Perkins
The show is up until December 21. Gallery Hours are 1-6 Friday thru Sunday, or by appointment. For more information: (917) 841 5921
Website: http//www.bulletspace.org
