Passionate love is Temporary
Insanity the Chinese
say that day
I walked nine miles in a bowl
the hill makes coming round
and round avoiding
the road in
sane I realized a whole
week later….
– Olga Broumas, from Landscape with Loaves and Figure
At Howard House, the title of the exhibit Dearly, Madly comes from a pathetically excessive sentiment expressed in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo:
I love her dearly, madly; I love her so much that I would shed all my blood to save her one tear.
As soon as it’s said, the loved one is looking for the door. Curated by artist Robert Yoder, Dearly Madly explores the spirit of doomed pursuit. The nature of the pursuit insures its failure and seals desire into an endless loop,having nowhere else to go.
Michael Dee‘s Heartsmelt (The Panopticon) is a Jeff Koons’ on the skids. Trailing its own battered props, this party is dead and doesn’t know it.
Shaun Kardinal‘s Repose is in love with its own melancholy.
In gorgeous video performances on tiny screens, Julia Oldham imitates the mating rituals of insects. She memorized their antics and can repeat them perfectly.
If Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilimnik did not exist, I doubt Alika Cooper would be able to invent them. She hitched her wagon to their stars, and yet hovering inside her paintings is a distinct form struggling to get out.
I’m not sure what Haim Steinbach is doing in this show. A self-possessed member of the Cool School, Steinbach has never demonstrated a flair for or interest in vulnerability. He’s the Giorgio Morandi of consumer goods, and his shelf life goes on forever.
I like the Farrah Fawcett painting better on the computer screen than I did in person. At the opening I kept trying to find something to like about it, but all the printmaker in me could see was the backwards Rives BFK watermark glaring back at me from a sheet of paper that has an obvious right and wrong side.
But what if she meant to use the backside for “conceptual reasons?” (Sure she did. Just like all my freshman students used to…)
Julia Oldham’s videos are delightful. Reminds me of Isabella Rossellini’s “Green Porno.”
Thanks for informing me that the woman depicted is Farrah Fawcett. I dearly love the concept of this dear presentation.
Regina – here is a link to an interview with Haim Steinbach. It might help you grasp why his work was included in the show http://www.genetologisch-onderzoek.nl/index.php/538/anthropology/archaeologie/