Art for Art's Sake

What do people think of the offerings at last Saturday's Art for Art's Sake?

We found the Julia Street beer fountain performance by Generic Art Solutions, the charcoal and watercolor Katrina Portrait series by David Bates at Arthur Roger Gallery, and the Robert Colescott paintings (such as Summertime, 1995, with secret hidden message), also at Arthur Roger, to be highlights of the night.
G.A.S. once again place themselves within a love triangle between New Orleans street performers, late 60's era performance artists Gilbert and George, and the appropriation of art historical subject matter (such as the hundreds year old boy Manneken Pis of Brussels). The performance was funny, and the choice of liquids seemed appropriate to the increasingly Bourbon Street party vibe of these Julia Street events, where often the crowds seem just as preoccupied with drinking, and subsequently finding places to urinate as with taking in the art. The David Bates portraits are startling in their concise and confrontational presentation. The drawings are pared down caricatures of post Katrina skepticism, drafted deftly, with economy of line and value. The Colescott paintings at Arthur Roger are equally confrontational. Using bold, almost unnerving, clashes of color to provoke the eye, Colescott's canvases almost vibrate. Forms sometimes cartoonish, sometimes surreal, sometimes completely abstracted angle in from every direction to join scenes of violence, sex, or absurdity concerning race and politics in modern society. And like Generic Art Solutions, Colescott puts his own twist on well known art historical works, as in All Roads Lead to Rome after Mona Lisa. These are paintings where I enjoy the painter's hand, his harried stroke, his change of plan. The expressionist painting approach adds electricity to the content, our only complaint is where the artist's hand recedes, as in the use of stamps for some of the text (such as in Who Killed Cock Robin). We appreciate similar aspects in Colescott's work to that of Brad Benischek, so if you admire B.B., you should see this show. Unfortunately, Robert Colescott passed away this Summer, but we are lucky to have fine examples of his life's work available to see here in New Orleans - check it out!

We also found some of Ann Schwab's work at CoLAB Projects and some of Anita Cooke's work (like her 2009 Flow portrait of the Mississippi river in fabric and bobby pins) at Jonathan Ferrara to be strong as well. Schwab's work tends toward the sentimental, but also, due to tight attention to detail and clean craftsmanship, choice of imagery, and process, the work in her newest show, Pure, can be so dreamy. There is a contemplative and quiet nature to just about every image she chooses to work with. And then, sometimes sewing into, sometimes isolating, sometimes even dangling these images (of trees, seed pods, water, hands), she creates spaces where perhaps her own meditation on the images becomes apparent and extends to the viewer. She juxtaposes these images of the natural world with her own human intervention that somehow recreates, rearranges, or pays homage to the natural relationships in the imagery. Work like this sometimes runs the risk of being cloying or cheesy, but Ann Schwab seems to have avoided these pitfalls with smart editing and utterly spotless presentation. Anita Cooke also seems to create meditative spaces in her work. A lot of the pieces in her show (Dimensional Patterning: Sewn Constructions) give us a knee-jerk negative response because of our aversion to, and their affinity for, a heavy craft focus. Some of them are like quilts on steroids, and we find the added wire, splatter paint, grog, and baubles a bit much. However, the sheer volume of work and dedication to process is almost redeeming. The works we find strongest in this show are those that transcend their confines, and even their process, to create an "other" experience. The folds, flaps, and bobbypinned connections of Flow, coupled with the myriad metallic hairlike threads that pop out, bouncing light from the piece, create a new and ethereal environment from a distance. This piece reminds us of how the shadow and undulations of drinking straws in a wall of Tara Donovan's Haze, can become a gateway beyond the gallery. The crimps and undulations in Flow remind us of topography and earth, and a weird wonderful colorful ether contouring an invisible river, and not simply the sheer number of thread and stitches and machine stitching that went into creating it.

An interactive sound piece by Marcus Brown and Nathan Weidenhaft struck a wrong note with us. Although the long strip of vibration sensitive, sound emitting sculpture seemed endlessly entertaining for any number of people at any given time, we didn't really understand the correlation between form and function. The sounds did not seem to collaborate with the movements of the interactors so much, and the movements required to elicit sound did not seem to relate to the form of the piece. This felt like nascent technology not quite ready for the open market. We find many ideas surrounding this piece interesting, but we wish the the presentation of the runway itself, or the demands of the piece on the participant, were more thoughtfully considered and interrelated.

At Studio 527, we found a few interesting works, but, truthfully, we found the whole space to be so haphazardly organized (or not organized), huge, and full, it was hard to make heads or tails of much of it. Studio 527 is the internet of exhibition spaces (tons of content, everywhere, all the time). It definitely gives us art ADHD. Some close-up photographs of makeshift architectural models as cityscapes by Danny Kempton stood out.

None of us made it out to Magazine street or any other "off Julia" openings, so please post about your A.F.A.S. experience on Julia and BEYOND. As always, we hope these comments are somehow helpful, and somehow constructive.