When you see a film, live music or a theatrical performance, you’re literally a captured audience: You can’t help but pay attention. When it comes to viewing art in a gallery, however, you’re free to move about. Add to that your ever-shortening attention span, and you quickly see the problem. A work of art, no matter how big or dramatic, has only seconds to make an unforgettable impression before you move on.
Deitch Projects has a reputation for mounting memorable shows, and once again they’re trying to cross your brain barrier with two new solo exhibitions; Bianca Casady’s Lil Girl Slim “Cosmic Willingness” Pipe Dreamz A Revelation and the Death of Mad Vicky Lopez and Micah Ganske’s Pictures Last Longer.
Attempting to wow us with raw outrageousness, Casady’s show is half installation and half traditional wall art. Hung along the left and back walls are paintings on paper with stuff glued on, doodle drawings and color-saturated collages. Running down the other side of the shoebox-shaped gallery are a few steps that lead to a platform. Baby blankets and knitted throws are laid over the steps, and centered on the platform there’s a throne-like chair covered with junk, and a slashed and trashed living room set is off to the right. The whole mess is draped in faux cobwebs and black netting.
The gallery offered no statement on the show, so since the images are childish—and the work childishly done—one might guess the work is exploring a media-saturated childhood as seen through the eyes of an infantilized adult. Certainly a relevant theme, and Casady’s work could be the billboard for short attention spans, yet due to its own lack of focus, it fails to hold the audience’s attention.
Micah Ganske uses scale, skill and scary images to capture you, and it works–sort of. In the back room, his four “museum-scale” paintings (read: too big for most homes, hopes a museum will buy them) are beautifully rendered in a staining /painting process. Nearly transparent, the technique pulls you in for a closer how’d-he-do-that look. The subjects are slightly ambiguous, and the apocalypse crowd will see their prophecies in works like “Exit Strategy,” which features an abandoned car drowning in a flood. Or the image of a couple standing next to their stalled 4x4, their worried faces stare into the unknown. In the front gallery, Ganske has created portraits of attractive faces, but made them semi-zombies by way of stark lighting and glazed-over eyes.
His talents win our admiration, his scale assures the work won’t be overlooked and his open-ended tales will compel some to finish the story. The question is: Will his illustrations of current events stand the test of time? In his statement, Ganske defends his trendy subjects. “We have relied too heavily on the history of painting to light our way,” he explains. True enough, still, to avoid the dark abyss of forgotten things, contemporary artists must be memorable. This was never an easy task, and now it’s even more uneasy.
Ganske through Nov. 3 at 76 Grand St. (at Wooster St.); Casady through Oct. 20, with performance by CocoRosie on Oct. 19 at 9pm, Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster St. (betw. Grand & Canal Sts.), 212-343-7300.
Deitch Projects has a reputation for mounting memorable shows, and once again they’re trying to cross your brain barrier with two new solo exhibitions; Bianca Casady’s Lil Girl Slim “Cosmic Willingness” Pipe Dreamz A Revelation and the Death of Mad Vicky Lopez and Micah Ganske’s Pictures Last Longer.
Attempting to wow us with raw outrageousness, Casady’s show is half installation and half traditional wall art. Hung along the left and back walls are paintings on paper with stuff glued on, doodle drawings and color-saturated collages. Running down the other side of the shoebox-shaped gallery are a few steps that lead to a platform. Baby blankets and knitted throws are laid over the steps, and centered on the platform there’s a throne-like chair covered with junk, and a slashed and trashed living room set is off to the right. The whole mess is draped in faux cobwebs and black netting.
The gallery offered no statement on the show, so since the images are childish—and the work childishly done—one might guess the work is exploring a media-saturated childhood as seen through the eyes of an infantilized adult. Certainly a relevant theme, and Casady’s work could be the billboard for short attention spans, yet due to its own lack of focus, it fails to hold the audience’s attention.
Micah Ganske uses scale, skill and scary images to capture you, and it works–sort of. In the back room, his four “museum-scale” paintings (read: too big for most homes, hopes a museum will buy them) are beautifully rendered in a staining /painting process. Nearly transparent, the technique pulls you in for a closer how’d-he-do-that look. The subjects are slightly ambiguous, and the apocalypse crowd will see their prophecies in works like “Exit Strategy,” which features an abandoned car drowning in a flood. Or the image of a couple standing next to their stalled 4x4, their worried faces stare into the unknown. In the front gallery, Ganske has created portraits of attractive faces, but made them semi-zombies by way of stark lighting and glazed-over eyes.
His talents win our admiration, his scale assures the work won’t be overlooked and his open-ended tales will compel some to finish the story. The question is: Will his illustrations of current events stand the test of time? In his statement, Ganske defends his trendy subjects. “We have relied too heavily on the history of painting to light our way,” he explains. True enough, still, to avoid the dark abyss of forgotten things, contemporary artists must be memorable. This was never an easy task, and now it’s even more uneasy.
Ganske through Nov. 3 at 76 Grand St. (at Wooster St.); Casady through Oct. 20, with performance by CocoRosie on Oct. 19 at 9pm, Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster St. (betw. Grand & Canal Sts.), 212-343-7300.
