Can draw the line.
(Donald Urquhart from Daily Serving)
Archives for March 2010
Grant Barnhart – Picasso’s bull
Picasso’s bull lands with a thud in the new world. All its pleasure torn with rough strife through the iron gates of life is one more object that clings to its glory days in a crowded room.
Saul Bellow, from Humboldt’s Gift:
Humboldt wanted to drape the world with radiance, but he didn’t have enough material. His attempt ended at the belly. Below hung the shaggy nudity we know so well.
Grant Barnhart, at Ambach & Rice
Opening Oct. 8 at the Seattle Art Museum, Masterpieces from Musée National Picasso.
Armor you can’t count on
Debra Hampton, image from Look Into My Owl.
Suit of Armor #2, recyclable plastic containers and lids, glue, spray
paint and clear glaze, 2010
Dan Webb, Skin, 2009. Rawhide
Webb again, Mr. Fixit, Duct Tape
Alon Levin – fun forests for purists
Somewhere between sculpture stand and Donald Judd, Alon Levin makes his pitch. He’s an impersonator, and his work is his wisecrack. It appears to be waiting to launch, but the launch doesn’t come. The jokes are on the tip of his tongue. His installations look like storage, but the pieces inside each one don’t quite make it as pedestals. What art would want to stand on the snappy splendor of such glory hogs?
Placement is crucial. What could be a homage to luggage waiting to be loaded onto a private plane reads instead as architecture. Beside a house, a doorbell; in front, a walkway and garden.
Once upon a time, a sculpture stand woke up as a painting. (Little lamb, if you are able, turn yourself into a table.)
Levin’s backsides cue storage or even construction, the crew on its lunch break.
The artist thrusts the bit players of the museum experience into starring roles. They puff up into primary structures but trail a history of their servitude.
They are also fun forests for purists.
Levin’s Art for the Masses at Ambach & Rice through March 21. (Related: Roy McMakin, also at Ambach & Rice.)