FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AMERICAN ICONOGRAPHY
Curated by John Friedman
June 30 - August 4, 2010
Adam
Baumgold Gallery presents the exhibition "American Iconography,"
from June 30 through August 4, 2010. Artists included in the exhibition
are Jules de Balincourt, Darcy Brennan, Matthew Craven, Jane Dickson,
Adam Helms, Matthew Day Jackson, Vivienne Koorland, Dave Mishalanie,
Matt Saunders, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Felandus Thames. Works in
the exhibition reflect the broad diversity of the nation and its icons.
The pieces incorporate everything from the Bald Eagle and the American
cavalry that "conquered" the West, though in unexpected presentations
which reflect the hypocrisies and ironies inherent in these icons, to
the bathtubs that graced the urban landscape through which so many Americans
passed at the turn of the last century.
Jules
de Balincourt's painting "Get Outa Town," 2003 presents a
novel version of the traditional country fair set in a post-utopian
future. An encampment of crude geodesic domes, once popular with back-to-earthers,
appears to be deserted. The titular banner could be telling you to get
out of either the city or wherever this place is. Speaking to currents
of the apocalyptic in American thought, post-punk, communalism and environmentalism,
these artists tap a resurfacing edge of counterculture.
Alison
Elizabeth Taylor's "Cheryl," 2003 evokes the suburban angst
of the same era both in form and substance. Lovingly inlaid in "genuine"
fake wood veneer contact paper, a "plasticized" material introduced
in the 1960's, it resembles nothing so much as the flat brown-toned
graphic advertisements which suffused the exploding American economy
of the time. The scene of two women awkwardly failing to connect is
as banal and brittle as the surfaces of the pieces, so that pictorial
"surface" becomes a pun that refers to a façade, possibly
with something dark beneath. Darcy Brennan conjures a similar prefab
domestic anxiety; her oversized charcoal drawing "Sticky Tub,"
2010 reminds us that a bathtub is at the most basic level a container
for a body.
Matthew
Craven's "Wooden Teeth," 2010, re-presents George Washington
as the mysterious and crafty mason of conspiracy theory. On the familiar
history book image, he masks the countenance of the great man with a
static of pattern, betraying a tension between our myths of national
origin and the half buried truths behind these stories. In Felandus
Thames's Untitled, 2010, he addresses the persistence of the post-colonial
myth and how it continues to affect our actions. Vivienne Koorland's
"Gulf," 2010 suggests the consequences of American myths of
dominance.
David
Mishalanie's piece from the series "Internal Progression"
he tenderly redraws a photo of a man from the period of American expansion,
in matte pastel pigments that mute the rigidity of the posed portrait.
The drawing is as ephemeral as a secret, situated in an ambiguous extra-historical
past.
Then
we are safely in the 20th century, in which Steinberg's "View of
the World from 9th Avenue,"1981 settles the problem of America
by revealing it as an unmarked wasteland beyond the glowing metropolis
of New York, a dark continent, strange, distant, and probably not worth
looking into.
Summer
hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11:00 - 5:30 P.M. A preview of the
exhibition can be seen at www.adambaumgoldgallery.com. For additional
information please contact Adam Baumgold at (212)861-7338 or abaumgold@aol.com.
