Proof of Concept

Lisa M Robinson at Klompching Gallery

Dave Hickey sited September 11th as the official death of post-modernism. For several years there has been speculation in academic circles on the nature and name of our currently cultural zeitgeist.

Anyone walking into Klompching Gallery this month with this question would conclude that we have entered a hybrid of minimalism and sublime romanticism. Lisa M Robinson's finest snowscapes present a placid, breathtaking flatness. Robinson's camera compresses the austere beauty of the winter with the traces of suburbia left to weather the elements. The resulting beauty of vast impenetrable fields of white also courts a comparable vacancy of content, that left me cold. Snowbound presents the aesthetics of minimalism, but in this new century, it is a style that has lost the original political and aesthetic context.

On view at Klompching Gallery
111 Front St Suite 206
DUMBO Brooklyn, NY

Labels: Lisa M Robinson

70% of the United States GDP is spent on personal consumption. In our society the notion of "desire" seems to have roots in our countries cultural history of exploration, of conquest and manifest destiny. With the continent conquered and imperialism reaching its denouement, that desire seems to be sublimated into consumerism and into a commodified sexuality.

At the Brooklyn Art Council this month Scott Henstrand has curated as show the looks past all this to the catalyst for desire. If you agree with French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan desire stems from a fundamental lack and an attempt to attain wholeness. For Lacan, this a pre-lingual, pre-ego stage of bliss. Henstrand has my respect for refraining from literal interpretations, rather he assembled works of all media that speak of a viseral notion of lack.

Lisa Dahl's contribution is wicked through a combination of being understated and clever. The appropriated real estate image over sized suburban housing is obliterated with sky blue paint . In this instance, what is desired is the lack of the subject. By applying paint to the surface of the found real estate magazine, Dahl is obliterating these McMansion lots and restoring nature.

Heather Willems fills the void of a notebooks worth of blank pages with the phrase "I love you" written ceaselessly in tiny perfect script. The lack of the empty page is filled with another permutation of desire; an effort to communicate and an implied reader, both made implicit with the written word.

In Willems' second work, "Cover" the same text forms a reverse horizon and landscape. In this Henstrand's contribution as curator shines, with such an academic topic he remains sensitive to simple aesthetics. "Cover" enters a conversation with two nearby pieces, HyoJeong Nam's ceaseless and perfect loops server as counter point to Willems diaristic recordings. Miya Ando Stanoff echo's the horizons of Cover in an implacably perfect metal surface.

Lack of Desire is at the Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery DUMBO. 111 Front Street, 718-625-0080 January 17 - April 11, 2008

Labels: Heather Willems, Lisa Dahl, Miya Ando Stanoff