A R T   L E T T E R

The Timely Magazine of Art

Alan Rath at the CAM	11/12

Video monitors displaying taunting mouths or a single eye, mocking and
silly, are attached to hoses or machines, giving the video facial parts real
life bodies. In one instance a tongue is connected to a joystick you can
control. A monitor squeezed in a vise displays a pained, vibrating face. This
work is seductive in its comical flippancy and unassailable execution, but
is there anything more here than wow-cool?-Delfina     



Das Pop at Moody Gallery	11/18

Guillaume Paris' plastic-encased sausages are disgusting and funny,
evoking the suffocating isolation of the commercially packaged good life.
Chris Hogg's xerographs pretend to cultural critiques they don't fulfill: a
man in stylish winter clothing is supposed to represent the smug
certainties of the bourgeoisie, but it just isn't working. Hogg aims for the
same visual propaganda he is commenting on but fails to get his point
across with anything approaching the clarity of commercial advertising.
Joe Allen's slick media-style images are clearer, encoding the standard
concepts of left-wing revisionist art history about the "fascism of
images". Sony=Nazi? perhaps, but Allen adds little to what is essentially a
critical debate. David Szafranski repeats the same tired lawnchair
weavings in every material available, hoping something will hit. The
Marabou feathers do. Martha Bush's fragile, emotional objects show the
alienation of modern life in a more personal way, inviting the viewer to
share a place on the tiny beds, the tent or the house.-B.D.



Jackie Tileston at Lawing Gallery                                         	12/2

In spite of their seeming boldness, these paintings are gutless! There is not
one unpredictable moment: each piece has a designated palette, a  balanced
composition. There is no sense of a concerted attempt at achieving anything
in particular, besides completing a piece of ART. Saccharine impressionist
backgrounds (waterlilies) are apologized for with slack, carefully messy
glops and spills. The 112 tiny paintings in the back room give the artist
away: they read like a revue of abstract-painting cliches: dots, blobs, lines,
ab-ex, geometric/organic line drawings. This is exactly what you would do
if you were stuck in painting class for the afternoon and didn't have any
ideas. Most of these sketches could not stand up alone, and the fact they're
in the gallery at all is indicative of a lack of tough judgment.-Delfina & B.D.



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