The singing art critic

Before he became director of Western Bridge, Eric Fredericksen was an art critic.

To wit, his review of Whiting Tennis in 2000:

WHITING TENNIS’ new work is dumb. Dumb as in dumb luck, dumb as in mute, dumb as in the best solution to a problem is the simplest one. In these forms, dumb is good. And in art, this kind of dumb is rare.

Art is rarely free of gamesplaying, of a strategically marked-out position that the artist can work from, of some role that defines readings and defends the value of the work. Tennis’ position for this show is dumbness. In his cogent, helpful artist’s statement (these two adjectives apply to almost no other artist’s statement) he writes that he’s “the kind of person who’s struck dumb by a child’s painting or a little canvas-board winter landscape with birds, and thought it odd that after 15 years or more of ‘painting’ I’d never sat down and tried to make a ‘picture.’ So I did, literally sit down and try.”(more)

Before he was an art critic, he was a singer, as in, he sang in the shower. Years of singing in the suds led logically to karaoke, and karaoke left him with theories he plans to share Wednesday night at 7:30 at On The Boards. Interview with Eric about his performance here.