Pushing Buttons

Robin Rice on Visual Art

by Robin Rice

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The relatively fledgling artists chosen by the curatorial team of Clair Iltis, William Pym and Heather Shoemaker for Fleisher/Ollman's Winter Invitational "Street Button" fall into different categories of discipline, materials and sensibility. This makes for an engaging show but few generalizations. The two I can make about the street-savvy nine are that each seems cognizant of historical, visual culture and each is notably sensitive to texture.

Gregory Brellochs, at least in this show, sticks to tones of black and white. Three paintings are slick, viscous, visceral ink and varnish on wood; and there's a fourth precisely rendered angular abstraction in soft graphite on paper. The meticulous, explosive structure of the latter, Kinesis, with its blazing white center, reminded me of Beatnik Jay DeFeo's obsessive paintings The Rose and The Jewel.

Also relying on black and white — but in three dimensions — Stephanie Beck is showing an openwork wall relief of charcoal and black-painted pine. Density looks like a lattice of black lines detached from a scrunched-up city map. The network of streets and buildings projects shadows on the white wall and conveys ideas of population density and patterns of activity. It suggests the antlike irrelevance and fragility of human delusions of order and control.

Yvonne Lung also represents human production in her culturally grounded work. From across the room, the ongoing wall piece The Color of My Flesh resembles a head-height decorative chair railing. Close up, it's two long rows of cast porcelain doll heads. Because there's a bit of a surprise at the end, I won't describe it further, but the idea is straightforward. This is a didactic exercise and an effective one.

Though more minimal and overtly offhand, Andrew Gbur's small-scale collages and assemblages reminded me of the visual dialogue between Picasso and Braque in the early light-hearted days of Cubism. In Skull Belt, snipped-out clippings suggest the vocabulary of traditional Western portrait painting. Several pieces include transcriptions of printed words.

Ryan P. McCartney is showing thinly painted abstractions on coarse jute. My favorites are in pale neutrals with a pattern of lighter dashes. Using a modular minimalist approach, possibly programmatic in the vein of Sol LeWitt, Jamie Dillon's Step Pyramid No. 2 consists of identical brightly and differently striped frustums of cones. (That's cones with their tips amputated, for you non-coneheads.) Dillon's focus seems essentially formal and visual.

A Room (pictured on previous page) is the most interesting of Andrew Brehm's installations partly because it's accompanied by a video (at the desk, not near the work), which shows Brehm assembling furniture that incorporates pieces of luggage in which it can be wonkily packed away. In the video he assembles the suite, sits on the suitcase chair and reads a newspaper. It's ingenious and offbeat. Brehm is sensitive to surfaces, from glossy plastic coating to jacquard fabric to dilapidated leatherette.

A more traditional approach to interiors is provided by Eva Wylie's rather baroque garden-related screen prints. A curtain with negative cut-outs contrasts with the same elements presented as site-specific prints on the wall. The luscious colors and leaf/feather shapes work well in both manifestations. Bunched fabric is more cumulative and abstract. Crisp silhouetted symmetrical wall designs of urns and garlands hearken back to Pompeii.

I noticed that Jennifer Levonian has sold several copies of her limited-edition (very affordable) videos. This patronage must reflect the increasing engagement and accessibility of artist videos as a medium of home entertainment. Too bad no chairs were provided in the gallery. Maybe I should have dragged over Brehm's suitcase.

Nevertheless, the amusing Smells Like English Boxwood, a story of parrots in Williamsburg, transcends foot fatigue. Levonian's brilliantly colored animations are full of verve, and the narrative pacing is excellent. You, Starbucks is superb in its filmic references. Levonian has mastered the art of combining words, sound and vision.

Check out this show because you will be seeing and hearing from these artists in the future.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Street Button: 5th Winter Invitational

Fleisher/Ollman Gallery1616 Walnut St., Suite 100215-545-7562fleisherollman.comThrough Jan. 26