"Slough" - a swamp, a marsh, despair, the act of shedding, an infamous English town; pronounced sluff, slew, slow - is the title and tenor of painter Steve DiBenedetto's curatorial undertaking at the David Nolan Gallery, and, curiously, the show is faithful to the word.
Sitting in the gallery window, Keith Edmier's Cycas Apotropaica (2009) is a primordial welcome to the depths of "Slough." The cycas tree is Edmier's first living work (his plant works, usually cast in a man-made material, are meditations on natural forms entangled with human interactions and interpretations). Inside, hodge-podge and happenstance come together, the gallery a breeding ground for castoffs, residual materials, layering, and encrustation. A provocateur in all mediums, Dieter Roth is represented by Shlecht Erkennbares Blumen Still-Leben (1977-79), an energetic assembly of graphite and cardboard bits and bobs, which stick out from within its edges. A signature Dan Colen work, made of chewing gum and its residue, is whispery and delicate in application. Andy Warhol's amorphous rust orange "Piss" paintings (1978) - urine and gesso on canvas - are predecessors to Colen's work, and, appropriately, two examples from the Warhol series are placed beside it. Philip Taafe's marbled works on paper Slough I and Slough IV (2003) are in a state of both becoming and degenerating, recalling lava or melting ice cream. And Fabian Marcaccio's gurgling pair of sculptures This just out paintant (2008-09), disgorge their innards - pigmented inks, alkyd paints, and silicone gels - into midair. But Michelle Segre's orificial Untitled (2009) formation - constructed of papier-mache, metal, beeswax, acrylic, and oil - turns this swamp into a vivacious wetland. The sponge-like, bright-hued organism is the new birth growing within the gloriously mucky environment. Alexander Ross, Joe Bradley, Jessica Craig-Martin, Carroll Dunham, Frank Stella, Jon Kessler, Larry Poons, and Cheryl Donegan, among others, also take part in this Chelsea slough.
Sitting in the gallery window, Keith Edmier's Cycas Apotropaica (2009) is a primordial welcome to the depths of "Slough." The cycas tree is Edmier's first living work (his plant works, usually cast in a man-made material, are meditations on natural forms entangled with human interactions and interpretations). Inside, hodge-podge and happenstance come together, the gallery a breeding ground for castoffs, residual materials, layering, and encrustation. A provocateur in all mediums, Dieter Roth is represented by Shlecht Erkennbares Blumen Still-Leben (1977-79), an energetic assembly of graphite and cardboard bits and bobs, which stick out from within its edges. A signature Dan Colen work, made of chewing gum and its residue, is whispery and delicate in application. Andy Warhol's amorphous rust orange "Piss" paintings (1978) - urine and gesso on canvas - are predecessors to Colen's work, and, appropriately, two examples from the Warhol series are placed beside it. Philip Taafe's marbled works on paper Slough I and Slough IV (2003) are in a state of both becoming and degenerating, recalling lava or melting ice cream. And Fabian Marcaccio's gurgling pair of sculptures This just out paintant (2008-09), disgorge their innards - pigmented inks, alkyd paints, and silicone gels - into midair. But Michelle Segre's orificial Untitled (2009) formation - constructed of papier-mache, metal, beeswax, acrylic, and oil - turns this swamp into a vivacious wetland. The sponge-like, bright-hued organism is the new birth growing within the gloriously mucky environment. Alexander Ross, Joe Bradley, Jessica Craig-Martin, Carroll Dunham, Frank Stella, Jon Kessler, Larry Poons, and Cheryl Donegan, among others, also take part in this Chelsea slough.
September 9, 2009
