reviews nicOle eiSenman
Nicole
eiseNmaN:
show BorN
of fear
27 OctOber – 8 Decem ber
SuSanne Vielm etter
lOS angeleS PrOjectS
Nicole Eisenman isn’t one to hide behind
pretence. She’s called her most recent exhibition
A Show Born of Fear, and that’s precisely what it
is: a candid, comprehensive, splendidly awkward
investigation of anxiety and dread (personal,
artistic, political and otherwise), albeit tempered
by her characteristic humour. For those in need
of further clarification, the press release includes a
handwritten Venn diagram labelled ‘This Explains
Everything’, consisting of four intersecting circles –
‘European History / (Family History) / Germany’,
‘Heroes’, ‘Los Angeles History’ and ‘Midlife
Crisis’ – with names of the show’s major paintings
inscribed in the overlapping portions. Just below
is a pie chart titled ‘State of Mind 10/07’, in which
the largest segments are given over to ‘Tired’ and
‘Global Warming & Political Turmoil’, with only a
small fraction devoted to ‘Food’, ‘Drink’ and ‘Art’.
The dearth of artspeak is almost disconcerting. Is she being earnest? Ironic? Satirical? The
Untitled (Portrait of a Man Wolfie),
2007, oil on board, 122 x 99 cm.
brilliance of her humour – and her work – is that it seems to be all three, often simultaneously. Most of Photo: robert Wedemeyer. courtesy
the pieces (40 paintings and 18 monoprints) are portraits, and a glance around the gallery at this peculiar
Susanne Vielmetter los angeles Projects
cast of characters reveals them each to be balancing some ratio of absurdity and pathos: a deep-sea
diver; Hamlet; a ‘Were-artist’ at his easel; a thuggish sort referred to in the title as a ‘Man Wolfie’; and, in a
piece titled Conscious Mind of the Artist (Subconscious Decision and Actions in Progress) (all work 2007), a
green-skinned ogre in an undershirt who pulls a cart piled high with what looks like rainbow-tinted manure,
atop which a monkey sits at an easel which is about to be pummelled by a sailing can of tuna fish. If
there’s anything these unfortunate figures share, it is a robust, even burdensome physicality, accentuated
by Eisenman’s muscular application of pigment and pointedly graceless technique. She can paint like a
master but usually doesn’t, opting instead to indulge every bad painterly habit she manages to churn up;
whether in an act of parody or confession (or both) isn’t clear.
By any reasonable aesthetic standard, the show is a mess: visually chaotic, conceptually garbled,
formally uneven and stylistically schizophrenic, with moments of revelatory beauty (the face of the deep-
sea diver, for instance) scattered among nuggets of truly impressive ugliness, such as Thickest Painting, a
portrait made from sloppy coils of what looks like dingy, dust-coated toothpaste (actually foam). There
are so many things wrong, in fact, that the effect is downright exhilarating. The only thing holding it all
together is the only thing that really matters: that ineffable quality – whether intelligence, determination
or mad conviction – that makes it clear Eisenman knows what she’s doing, so grounded in her identity as
an artist that she can wrestle with her fears, not in some back corner of her studio, but on the very surface
of the canvas. Holly Myers
115 artreview
JAN_REVIEWS.indd 115 4/12/07 15:29:42
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142