PERSPECTIVE: "Dead Flowers," Vox Populi

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PERSPECTIVE: "Dead Flowers," Vox Populi

POSTED: Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 5:30 PM

Filed Under: Arts Visual Art

City Paper welcomes guest Critical Mass columnist Jonathan Wallis, assistant professor of art history at Moore College of Art and Design. His column, "Perspective," runs monthly in this space, bringing a critical eye to a visual art scene that continues to thrive in Philadelphia. Questions? E-mail Wallis at jswallis@gmail.com.

Photo | Bijoux Altamirano | voxpopuligallery.org

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, performance documentation, Kembra Pfahler

"Got my own world to live through, and I ain't gonna copy you."
—Jimi Hendrix, "If 6 was 9"

"Dead Flowers," the current show at Vox Populi, pays tribute to eccentric American actor/director Timothy Carey, whose pioneering independent film production and insistence on preserving artistic integrity at the expense of popular "success" is familiar to those steeped in alternative cinema.

Curated by Lisa Gangitano, founder of the nonprofit alternative art space on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Participant Inc., "Dead Flowers" exemplifies her commitment to interdisciplinary and intergenerational exhibitions (the show will move to Gangitano's venue in NYC in early May), and explores the strategies, responses and resistances of artists to dominant culture and mainstream ideology over the last four decades. Starting from the concept of "the underground" as a site of alternative cinematic expression with Carey's highly controversial film, The World's Greatest Sinner (1962), the show meanders through various decades and media, suggesting a complex course of assimilations, mutations and contradictions that illuminate its fascinating, yet difficult, persistence.

voxpopuligallery.org

Timothy Carey

Ephemera and a video documentary segment introduce viewers to the protagonist in the lobby, where photographs, movie stills and articles, as well as comments by Carey's brother, present the man with the triangle goatee as a radicalized, self-driven social and artistic rebel. Adjacent to these materials is the first of several "intergenerational" juxtapositions; the infamous penis and breast casts of Cynthia Plaster Caster (yes, Jimi Hendrix is there) next to display cases filled with collages by contemporary Swiss artist Georg Gatsas. In one, Gatsas displays photographs and descriptions of Dubstep music subculture along with several pages of text discussing Julian Henriques' notion of "sonic dominance," an experience of sensory "hierarchy" via audio stimulus matching the distinct bass power of Dubstep music. This collage/visual essay is one of the more easily intelligible works related to the show's theme.

In another gallery, Paul Thek's Meat Cable (1968-69) crosses paths with work by individuals and collaboratives that are less familiar to mainstream art culture. One example, and a visual highlight of the show, is the work of African-American photographer Alvin Baltrop (who passed away in 2004). Documenting the sexual adventures and fringe lifestyle along a notorious set of New York City piers in the 1970s and 1980s, Baltrop attempted unsuccessfully to get his work accepted into galleries in New York City. Encountering resistance from all sides, he nevertheless continued to take photographs (the extent of his oeuvre is yet to be printed from his negatives) and has only recently been acknowledged by the public art world.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's double/single portrait, Red Chair Posed (2008), left me stumped (I misinterpreted it as a Nan Goldin-style "personal documentary photograph") when I viewed it. Only later did I learn its fascinating significance as a self-portrait of a single Artist, composed of "two gender variant activists and performance artists," Genesis and now-deceased Lady Jaye, in a Pandrogyne. In the next gallery, photographs of Kembra Pfahler and her female bandmates from subversive performance/glam rock act The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black confront viewers as pink, yellow, blue and red nudes captured photographically in bizarre, sexually provocative positions that look like planet Pandora gone porno.

voxpopuligallery.org

Charles Atlas

In the far back room, two videos by Charles Atlas present masked and costumed human heads that combine hypnotizing, slow physical movement and vocals with fetishistic masks and cyborg-like facial alterations (unless I am mistaken, one features Johanna Constantine, a one-time member of The Blacklips Performance Cult). Atlas, whose work was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, is known for the genre of media-dance where performative dance actions come to viewers via video. His works in this show evoke desires and conflicts with restraint, in mesmerizing repetitive gestures or poses.

Works by Marti Domination (of Matthew Barney Cremaster fame), Tabboo! and Scott Ewalt in the adjacent hallway and neighboring gallery are more lackluster; the paintings, prints and ephemera are just not that conceptually provocative or visually interesting. Too much empty wall space in this room compounds the issue and detracts from the works' reception.

The majority of work in "Dead Flowers" is New York-based, and I was surprised by the fact that not one Philadelphia-based artist was included in the show (and with some empty wall space to boot). Since "Dead Flowers" will be on display in both Philadelphia and New York, why not include some local examples of "alternative/underground artists" from recent decades and/or the present day, at least in its Philadelphia venue? We've got an underground tradition, too, and for a show weighted strongly toward issues of gender and sexuality, Philadelphia could easily provide counterpoints to New York City that might make the show more intimately attached to its first site while also providing a dialogue about the different manifestations of particular undergrounds between the two cities.

There are, nevertheless, fascinating layers to the artists included in "Dead Flowers." But their biographies, influences and artistic philosophies are not communicated or represented as well as they could be, and I'm not quite sure what Gangitano is aiming at by putting these specific artists together. In addition to the general curatorial statement about Carey and the concept of the underground in art, a short handout containing brief individual bios and descriptions/discussions of the works in the show would have enhanced and improved the comprehension of the themes explored; especially when not only the work itself but also much of its cultural references may be unfamiliar to more "mainstream" art audiences. After all, it is a show about underground activity, and while many of the artists now participate in the dominant art world, that by no means suggests their work and personal motivations are de facto easily legible and/or accessible.

voxpopuligallery.org

Marti Domination

And, while the show's nexus is Timothy Carey, other artists included in the show acknowledge a range of alternative art movements and individuals as having a significant impact on their processes, among them Dada, Surrealism, William Burroughs, John Cage and Hermann Nitsch. I would like to know how Carey might be framed within this broader tradition and history, as well. Vox Populi and Participant Inc. have scheduled a number of performances by artists in the show and screenings of Carey's films in April, and perhaps these events will bring a new dynamic and greater depth to certain aspects of the show's themes and work.

Despite this lack of information, the interdisciplinary and intergenerational approach to "Dead Flowers" raises provocative questions about the changing and conflicting notions of art and its relationship to dominant culture in recent decades. This, more so than the art in it, is what gives the show its charge. It offers the viewer an opportunity to reflect critically on concepts of the underground and their changing dynamics in recent and contemporary art, largely within the boundaries of a New York City art culture.

And it raises a set of very interesting critical questions: To what extent and to what purpose can art be autonomous today, and how has this shifted and mutated over the last few decades? How do artists work against or with various popular media? What results when alternative practices "enter" the dominant culture of art? Do they become absorbed into an exploitative system? When did these works "enter" and why (or are they still in the process of entering now)? Have these artists entered of their own accord or through the work of subsequent individuals? If the latter, what motivated them? How are subcultures driven and shaped by the very cultures they are reacting against? What are the effects of marking work with these labels? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know that I can buy an official "Plaster Caster T-shirt" from Cynthia Plaster Caster on her Web site. Is that "success?"

PREVIOUSLY >> PERSPECTIVE: "Onward" at Project Basho

Ellie Brown

Posted 2010-03-23 18:17:14

Thank you Jonathan for a new and refreshing voice in the art criticism pool in Philadelphia.

Posted by Jonathan Wallis @ 5:30 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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