Art Under Siege
Global fear-mongering has crashed into our collective consciousness, and the contemporary art world is literally illustrating the emotional consequences. One response to terror is to look away, to look back nostalgically. ClampArt Gallery takes you back to the 1980s to explore the life and art of Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989). As you enter the small gallery, your eyes meet Mark in a dramatic portrait by Stephen Tashjian. Around the room, Polaroids and photographs show the artist and his friends carefully, yet casually, posed. Their young, elegant bodies and naive style convey a sensuality so compelling that even 20 years on, their cool demeanor is still exciting.
As you return to the present, the apocalypse greets you at the RARE Gallery exhibition Landmarks, featuring mural-sized paintings by New York-based artist Jean-Pierre Roy. Terror and Hollywood have obviously taken control of his mind. Boldly colorful and thickly painted, his burning infernos and blasted cities draw you into his visions of impending doom. With titles like Dreams of Parted Steel, The Defeat of Anthropy and Nothing Earthly Now, he paints buildings attacked by hordes of airplanes, glowing bomb craters and cars crushed on abandoned streets, void of human life. The opening was packed; it seems everybody wants to know what the end will look like.
Over at Stux Gallery, you can see consequences of vicious actions through the eyes of witnesses in Photoshopped photos of wide-eyed dolls heads by Lydia Venieri. Printed on a shiny, silky material, the pictures, at first glance, are simply cute toys, but as you move in closer you find reflected on their glassy eyeballs images of suicide bombers, genocide victims, riots, beatings and all manner of brutality. The printing process renders the pictures with a 3-D quality that makes them all the more disturbing: The witnesses and photos may be fake, but their visions are all too real.
After staring into their ghastly gaze, you may want to wander to the front of the gallery to see what comes next by way of Dean Monogenis painting of futuristic housing. His style is part abstract art, part architectural rendering and part science fiction. Another Residential Fantasy features a home built on the side of a tree-covered peak, with an escalator running down into a pool of fire-red goo. Drop City is a fantastic glass and concrete structure that juts out of a rock cliff and dangles above the abyss. Theres something wonderful and encouraging about Monogeniss paintings, perhaps because they suggest that, even if we destroy this world, well build another one out of the ashes.
If that doesnt brighten your outlook, then step outside and look for the Yellow Trailer Art Gallery, a car trailer-turned-mobile-art-gallery.
Edward Kimball, the artist/owner stands at the back, holding up a black velvet curtain beckoning you to enter. Inside youll find pure escapism in the form of multiple videos, one framing the other. The framing video features country scenes, while the inner video features the road racing under the camera. The effect is stimulating, yet relaxinglike sitting in the passengers seat, watching the world rush away into a blur.
Mark Morrisroe through Oct. 6, ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25th St., 646-230-0020; RARE, 521 W. 26th St., 212-268-1520; Dean Monogenis & Lydia Venieri through Oct. 13, Stux Gallery, 530 W. 25th St., 212-352-1600.