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This satisfying collection of works by 13 young artists
meandered about the premise of nature and the city, but the show
really came together around a pair of formal categories: a cartoon-inspired
style and a collage esthetic. Paintings and drawings in the first
camp ranged from mutant to psychedelic to deadpan. In Fawn Gehweiler’s
oil-on-panel Oh Deer (2004), a doe-eyed girl sprouts an
antler. Petite nudes frolic across Deanne Cheuk’s painted
mushroom-scapes. Hunter Gatherer’s silkscreen print of a tree
constructed from wood planks is an absurd expression of alienation
from nature.
Linking the two styles, Thomas Campbell’s Yep
(2005) placed a geometric abstraction between two paintings of tree-shaped
people and their tree-shaped houses. A palette of soft oranges and
browns held the triptych together. In These Once Were Wetlands
(2005), Christopher Bettig used collage to bring depth to a landscape
composed of multicolored pyramids. Bill Farroux’s quixotic
assemblage of framed snapshots, paintings, and found objects recalled
the early installations of Barry McGee.
The most memorable works, however, were by two artists
with completely individual approaches. Jesse Alexander credits the
ocean as a collaborator on his untitled drawings: he throws nontoxic
white paint into the surf, lays down sheets of thick black paper
and lets the waves “draw.” The results are swirling
abstractions that evoke starry skies and other natural forms. In
contrast, Rebecca Suss’s graphic gouaches on Styrofoam insulation
panels comment directly on suburban sprawl. The tract houses she
paints are crowded so closely together that the viewer saw nothing
but hundreds of tiny pointed rooftops clumping and spreading in
wild, organic whorls. It’s a nightmarish vision of a landscape
with nothing to offer but claustrophobic sameness.
This review originally appeared
in the March, 2006 issue of ARTnews.
Reprinted with permission.
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