EUTOPIA

Matt Nolen

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Matt Nolen
Rough Trade
The Bowman~Penelec~Megahan Art Galleries
Allegheny College, Meadville, PA [link]

Matt Nolen pieces together vintage, found ceramic objects to re-member disparate experiences. The works tell a story of self-understanding by combining geometric shapes, eyes, faces, body parts, goblets, and collectible figurines. These amalgamations, while at first appearing to be cacophonous, are in fact a violent harmony of joinery which create an external visualization of the architecture of Nolen’s psyche. His vulnerable assemblages point out the ways in which we construct personal truths, and reveal tensions between internal and external representations of self. They are quixotic metaphors for the fragile notion of an immutable reality.

~Ian F. Thomas
images courtesy of the artist

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Luke Fowler

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Luke Fowler, amphitheatre at the Nasher

Luke Fowler, amphitheatre at the Nasher

Luke Fowler
Sightings: Luke Fowler
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas [link]
Through August 19, 2018

Fowler created a dual, site-specific aural experience in the amphitheater garden of the Nasher and Lismore Castle Arts that reveals hidden histories of the institutions and the inner structure of their respective sculptural objects. Influenced by Minimalist Avant-Garde music and Fluxus, the sound work in Dallas functions as a liminal dialogue between two sculptures by Naum Gabo and Barnett Newman. By transforming the sculptural surfaces into a speaker, recording and synthesizing the sign waves, the resulting auditory action questions the notion of sculpture as a physical object, as well as how we perceive an acoustic composition within the spacial ecology of place.

~ Colette Copeland
all images courtesy of the author, save the Barnett Newman image

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Iva Kinnaird

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Iva Kinnaird

Iva Kinnaird “Broke, Please Advise” 2018 _ Walmart shopping cart, bricks

 

Iva Kinnaird
A Two Page Paper on Impasse
The Reading Room, Dallas [link]
February 17 – March 24, 2018

Employing absurdist humor, Kinnaird’s exhibition riffs on Camus’ Sisyphus myth. Although many artists experience existential crises in the search for validation and meaning in their work, the timeliness of Kinnaird’s exhibit in context with the past 1year46days0hours44minutes36seconds resonates with a strong Barthesian punctum. The collapsed shopping cart of bricks and the grad-school dartboard reference the despair facing artists mired in mountains of art-school debt combined with the current bleak political culture. Using the metaphor of play, Kinnaird’s “games” provide diversion, while simultaneously pinpointing the futility of said gestures. Yet Camus’ ultimate message is about revolt. And we only have 1049days8hours26minutes24seconds left.

~ Colette Copeland
photos courtesy of the Reading Room, by Kevin Todora

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Alison Jardine

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Flood, 2017, cement with pigments, 23 X 23 X 6″

Alison Jardine
Objects From a Future Past
Erin Cluley Gallery, Dallas [link]
Sept. 9 – Oct.14, 2017

Alison Jardine has transitioned from rural to urban landscapes, from delicately painted twigs to delicately concrete-cast plastic bags. Her former rambles on ancient UK paths provided fallen tree-trophies. Walks on paved trails now reward the artist with contemporary Dallas artifacts, recovered flotsam and jetsam from congested run-off streams.

Colors, tones, and textures are mixed into the wet concrete itself, not applied later. The finished skin of each work weaves a density of surface, a unified consistency that penetrates the whole organic mélange.

Like excavated steles, Jardine’s iconic formats suggest emblematic associations, recalling ritualistic, semiotic shapes, votive amulets, or generational site-markers.

~ Thomas Motley
images courtesy of the artist

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Doug Aitken

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Doug Aitken
Electric Earth
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas [link]

Gloriously composed, the polished production of Aitken’s work is problematic. The mundane becomes transcendent, a sublimation of the common provoking a desire to romanticize the surreal playgrounds of parking lots, diners, deserts and seedy hotels. These overlooked, neglected fringes are made nostalgically beguiling. Simple, iconic phrases become alluring sculptures. Within this superficial world exists a provocation: a disproportionate ratio of seduction to content, granting the work optional profundity.

One may accept the dirt-glam fairytales of negligible morality as enchanting consumables, or optionally as subversive commentary on our pitiable desires fulfilled: another cultural megatexture mined for nostalgia and polished free of reality.

~ Ryder Richards
images courtesy of the author

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Amarit Chusuwan

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Amarit Chusuwan

Amarit Chusuwan
The More I Get to Know Men, The More I Love My Dog
Museum of Contemporary Art, Bangkok, Thailand [link]

In a museum heavy with Thai surrealism and religious allegory, this work stood out for its contemporary humor and media, albeit low tech video. What prevents this from remaining a didactic one-liner is the ever-shifting political context: history has no shortage of misuse of patriarchal power. The emasculated figures raptly watch TV monitors, yet instead of news feeds we see endlessly looped panting dogs—a self-portrait perhaps, pointing to mind-numbing obedience training. After a week’s news filled with Trump’s views on abortion, the Stanford rape trial and the Orlando shootings, I tend to agree with the artist’s viewpoint.

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the author

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