a degree of respect. Greenbaum’s acrylic-on- unexplored potential for photography’s place
Sintra paintings, on the other hand, fit in modernist abstraction. It’s an impressive
hyperreality like a glove: painted in a palette show that unfolds gradually and delights the
of pastel-neons unknown (or, more likely, viewer with seemingly unlimited potential for
outlawed) until the 1970s, the artist’s ongoing formal and aesthetic invention. As part of her
network of small, loosely iconographic images ongoing series Smoke & Mirrors, the photographs
(Archive, 2006-) evince a similar level of are also particularly successful in taking
sophistication as Liam Gillick’s coloured advantage of analogue as opposed to digital
Plexiglas structures. Greenbaum, like Gillick, film in rendering subtle textures and moods.
is an appropriationist for the post-capitalist Some of the works, such as Red Goya (diptych)
era, negotiating the structures of visuality (all works 2007) and Yellow Goya appear to be
and advertising from the position of virtual the same composition, and Quinlan messes around
consumer: hands down, he succeeds. with scale and lighting effects to create
vibrant images where texture and surface
(13) quality jar with the fractured, angular
The Dotted Line, Rotunda Gallery compositions. there are also departures from
the mainly zig-zag, geometric forms in images
After writing three reviews in a row (in rather like Black and White Backdrop #1 (2007) where
more of a wine-addled state than I’d usually evidence of more leathery, skin like surfaces
care to admit), I wouldn’t feign the capacity can be seen.
to do justice to curator Colby Chamberlain’s
exhibition on bureaucratic documents and art, (13)
which is why I recommend referring to the LIZZI boUGAtSoS Street Feather,
recently published review in Time Out New York James Fuentes LLC
(though I haven’t read it, for sake of critical
originality), or any of the others that the Lizzi bougatsos is in two bands, Gang Gang
Cabinet managing editor and critic-about-town Dance and I.U.D., both of which tour extensively.
will presumably have received by the time this She is reminiscent of the type of artist who
issue is published. inhabited the LeS during the 1980s, the last
time it passed through such a vibrant moment.
(14) Street Feather begins with a story and some
Song of Myself, Powerhouse
For her first exhibition with publisher/gallery
Powerhouse, curator Adriana Hernandez asked
nine photographers to respond to Walt Whitman’s
‘Song of Myself’ (1855) and contribute new or
old works that chimed with the poem’s celebration
of subjective expression. I don’t doubt that
Hernandez’s choice of artists was thoughtfully
made, but positing any exhibition in such a
relativistic framework can only result in a
tautology: artwork is a mode of self-expression,
ergo I choose to exhibit photographs that
express me. Indeed, much of the work on display
could have coalesced better under a different
heading, such as, say, Mapping Societies Near
and Abroad or Anthropological Imagery from a
Globalised World. And while many of these
images – from stalwart photographers like
Charles Harbutt, Alex Webb and Lucille
Fornasieri-Gold – were quite nice to look at,
the most interesting were the oddest-ones-out: writing by bougatsos, and it seems irresponsible
twenty-five-year-old Naho Kubota’s daytime not to include some of that here. briefly,
snaps of unlit neon on white backdrops. Lacking walking around the east Village one day,
visual clarity and semiotic communicability, bougatsos saw a birdhouse in the street that
these images were pressingly inquisitive, when looked to be made by a homeless person, and she
most of the other works came across as found it moving. She decided to recreate the
reapportioned photojournalism. birdhouse to human scale as a kind of monument
to that bit of fleeting, fragile, gutter
(15) humanity. From the outside Birdhouse for Humans
SIMoN RobeRtS Motherland, (2007) looks like a homeless shelter. Inside
Klompching Gallery are photocopies of semi-familiar-looking
people and hanging pieces of raw pork loin,
Perhaps my recent listen to NPR’s Intelligence one of which becomes a necktie for an
Squared debate ‘Is Russia becoming our enemy unidentified Xerox man, while another hangs
Again?’ didn’t prepare me well for Simon from the flies of a pair of photocopied
Reviews Marathon.indd 75 7/1/08 16:49:53
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