Karen Ganz – down the sinkhole, with style

In the mythology of American success stories, a go-getter rarely turns into a goofball. Anybody who is up and at ’em can count on cashing in stock options in the not-too-distant future, which is why American comic strips celebrate the cult of the loser.

Laughing at bunglers is the best way to keep them at bay, looking down from an Olympian height at their hapless struggles to improve. Comic strip fools and fall guys are rarely allowed to rise to the level of tragedy, and yet the best strip artists, from George Herriman to Robert Crumb, play with the formula by forcing the audience to acknowledge – at least unconsciously – a kinship.

Comic or otherwise, artists always link to chains. Even the newest new is rooted in the old. Now on view at Howard House, Karen Ganz’s paintings were begat by Herriman and Crumb, Philip Guston, Elizabeth Murray, Keith Haring and Michael Spafford.

In other words, her sad sacks have art-saturated, stumblebum rhythms.

Moving Target, #1 The figure seems to be a painter, buried her work, incapable of proceeding.

Detail:
I love this show, her best pulp fictions in years. It’s beautifully hung, and the paintings appear to be in forward motion, right off the walls.