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Antagonism, Hacks, and Hoaxes

 

8.29.07

Pop Tones: Fun-Loving Art Not Nearly So Much Fun In A Regular Old Gallery

By Bret McCabe

THE PROBLEM WITH STATING the obvious comes in how you choose to package it. Wrap it in coy sarcasm and it feels like a Simpsons punch line. Clothe it in casual sobriety and it can feel either parental or deadpan. Dress it up in peppy moxie and it feels like infelicitous cheerleader enthusiasm. Context still matters.

That's the main problem with Maryland Art Place's Antagonism, Hacks, and Hoaxes, a show with an ostensible "cynical take on contemporary consumerism and pop culture." As curated by the Current Gallery's Michael Benevento, everything here will be somewhat familiar to anybody who regularly stops by the Current's pants-seat shows or Wham City's spirited antics (note: the show includes works from City Paper contributor Ed Schrader). This setting, however, does the work no favors. At its best, the omnicultural ooze that the 22 artists/collectives turn out comes across as entirely too eager to please/offend, and at its worst, it feels like vacant celebrations of the self, the dangerous cul-de-sac of the cynic.

It's hard to knock a show's artists who are at least willing to fall on their face. There is dignity in spectacular failure, because ambition is in short supply in a city whose insular art community far too often embraces its familiar, mannered outsider status. How's that old horse go--live here long enough and you'll eventually become a so-called local institution? We've all heard different versions of it: Haven't really done anything new in a bit, but you probably heard about the crazy shit I staged in the 1980s.

Antagonism is aiming for its own take on outrageousness but too often takes aim at culture from inside the safety of the self-contained clique. Michael Farley's seven collaged digital prints seek transgression but fall way short, feeling merely immature. Each piece features a title that begins "The people I met . . . " and then the subject of each image completes the titular sentence. A shirtless, fat white man at a computer possibly chats with two women in perhaps Islamic garb in "The people I met on match.com"; a tampon floats near two African-American women in "The people I met outside Beauty Lane" as a word bubble features one saying, "Make a wall while I change my tamp." You can probably guess the tenor of "The people I met waiting for my HIV test" and "The people I met on the bus to Hampden." Fish, meet barrel.
That reek of effort pervades the Spectacular Society Corporation's wall of work. Part installation, part performance document, part something or other, the SSC's lambda prints, video, photos, and computer monitors trade in mock affront (images of planes possibly flying into various buildings), leaden obviousness (a broken Franklin Mint-caliber bald eagle statuette on the floor), and something supposedly to do with Easy Rider. Plus, it takes a certain kind of chutzpah to take aim at art markets with the faux deed piece "Own Art--Now Everyone can own Priceless works of Art" and then include prices (from $50-$500) for your own works, including one price on request and a few not for sale. You are not what you own, indeed.

You see, perhaps it's not that consumerism and pop culture are the problem, but consuming the wrong pop culture is. Robby Rackleff/Blue Leader's "Castle Leader: Tournament" is a hodgepodge of gaming mags, gaming paraphernalia, Legos, and video that embraces a popular culture, just not the one of American Idol. Elsewhere, such alternacelebrations pop up in the self-satisfied videos of Ray Roy (bong-hit silly internet phenom "Hamster Dance") and Jimmy Joe Roche ("Mixed Nuts," a lesser riff on his fabulous "Ultimate Reality"). Polaroid photos from various exhibited artists/members of the hivemind from Whartscape 2006 remind you of who is really on view here.

Which is not to say that everything here is subpar, just that the follow-through isn't as complete as it could have been. In fact, some of the pieces navigate the show's mission quite adroitly. Alexander Skarlinski's "Suits for Paris," a photographic series about the artist's plans to finance a Paris trip by reselling clothing, dryly comments on a marketplace that locates resalable value in used objects. Jeremy Rountree's "Never Remember" digital print takes what could be a found image of what looks like a tropical rain forest and superimposes the title across its bottom, a coyly subtle reminder of what rampant consumerism of certain products often adversely affects. And Dina Kelberman's wonderful constructions "Guitar" and "Dolphin" greet visitors in the front gallery, as her color-titled shirts and pants costume combos--"Green," "Yellow," etc.--hang on racks around the corner. The three-dimensional "Guitar" and "Dolphin" are as wittily alive as "Green," et al. can't be, and the juxtaposition of the two is as good a reminder as any that, sometimes, transporting your relentlessly alive underground zeal into the prim and proper white-walled market of the so-called establishment just sucks the life right out of it.