(19) (17)
InfInItu et ContInI Repeated Histories, Geometrics,
Reinvented Resistances, Smack Mellon Gallery onetwentyeight
I wouldn’t dare claim that Smack Mellon has, Aha! Just when one thought the days of founding
thematically speaking, resolved the ongoing movements were over – you know, with manifestos,
problem of how to exhibit video art en masse, international members, etc – Geometrics comes
though it must be said that its current along. this show not only introduced me to
exhibition adopts a theme (militarism) that is
geoform.net (‘a scholarly resource,
perhaps most effectively experienced through international forum, and curatorial project
visual and aural dissonance. there may have that focuses on the use of geometric form and
been some quality works set amid the hum, structure in contemporary abstract art’) but
rumble and occasional ironic soundtrack of the also to an artists collective called Criss-
dozen-odd videos on display, but I couldn’t Cross, who are obsessed with pattern and
bear to be in the space long enough to view structure, and are connected to the P&D (pattern
them. At the expense of the exhibited videos, and decoration) movement of the 1970s. each
Smack Mellon’s installation strategy more than artist here is interested in a specific style
made its point. of P&D painting: tessellations, fractals and
geometric form repeated at scaled intervals,
(20) from overlays and altered Islamic artforms.
elwyn PAlMerton The Revolution, the easy criticism to level at this show is
HQ Gallery that it was a little like stepping into a time
capsule, but that is equally true of shows all
elwyn Palmerton’s exhibition ostensibly over town. As a critic, one is used to wading
concluded on 16 november, which was a sad fact through knee-high rivers of pretentious,
for this reviewer, who’s always keen to give obnoxious, noncommittal, bad, pompous,
fellow critics-cum-artists-cum-critics their contrived, gimmicky art, and Geometrics was a
due. yet as I walked by HQ Gallery en route to welcome dose of folks making art just because
other shows, the revolution, it seemed, was they’re into it.
carrying on, albeit in a darkened room behind
closed doors. I tried my best to decipher the (18)
press release and messy, product-laden Holiday Reading, number 35
assemblages through the storefront window; had
clarity been more forthcoming, I do think I Holiday Reading has a fairly tight Christmas-
would have liked them. themed curatorial parameter that still comes
off as straight-up marketing, but hey, these
(21) galleries gotta shift some product to stay in
JuAn JoSe CAMbre Chromatism, business. the idea is to show artworks that
the Hogar Collection incorporate an object alongside a text (diptych
fashion): sometimes a book alongside a painting,
what fascinated me most about Juan José Cambre’s other times newsprint cutout and rearranged, a
exhibition was the press release, which handwritten postcard alongside a wall painting,
performed a pretty unexpected exhumation, in you get the idea. the work looks fine and is
this post-post-post-structuralist’s opinion. clever, and some of the associations between
foregoing mention of deconstruction, libidinal object and text reap humorous and thought-
economies and subcultural discourses, writer provoking rewards.
eva Grinstein raised the figurative roof for
Kandinsky, Goethe and even the venerable Isaac (19)
newton. Her ensuing discussion of colour theory CHrIStIAn SAMPSon, never work
was fascinating – far too fascinating, it must
be said, to accompany the dull, painterly As has been the running theme for many of the
investigations on display. galleries on my beat, never work is a single-
owner artist-run space that opened last
(22) September. After having worked at Marianne
Early Worm Gets the Bird, boesky for several years, Siobhan lowe started
Cinders Gallery the gallery with a mind to showing new york-
based artists. So far there are only three
the argument was probably more eloquently artists in her stable, so any unrepresented
stated during the years when the practice was new york-based artists better get their skates
a consequential player on the commercial art on! for the third show at the gallery, Christian
scene, but in the case of the current exhibition Sampson exhibited paintings that recall
at Cinders (well, in the case of pretty much nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts as well as
any exhibition at Cinders), it bears repeating: Middle eastern kilims. Sampson constructs his
that ‘f’ in ‘faux-naive’ stands for facility. paintings out of black-and-white cords nailed
think what you will about bearded Providence to a panel, making for a sort of cake-decoration
and Portland fellows producing fantastical effect via op art.
images of flute-playing dogs and faerie
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