Kalup Linzy, still from Ride to Da Club (2002) 5 minute dvd
The title of the show is "MOMMY, I'M! NOT! AN! ANIMAL!" The Sex Pistols? Even after seeing the installation at CAPSULE gallery, I'm not sure how it computes. If there was a press release on the desk, I guess I forgot to pick one up. I've decided I can do without the information for now, since even unenlightened by anyone's notes I think it's a damned good collection. The curator is the brilliant and very generous artist Andrew Gunther.*
You won't find much of anything on the gallery's website, so you'll have to take these pictures and/or my word for it. Oh, yes, there is this short blurb on re-title.com:
Curated by artist Andrew Guenther, the show explores the idea of influence through semi-autobiographical work -- paintings made of tar, a transcendental preparation room, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt made of yarn and sculpey with bobcat eyes, a flag monument in honor of those who have lost their lives in the battle for the environment, letter enigmas, a primal rock and psychedelic ink journeys that pit nature against nurture. Two of the artists in the exhibition are tattoo artists, who mark the world around them through people wearing their work. At the opening, video artist Kalup Linzy will lip synch in drag as Labisha (The Diva), in a hyperbolic homage based on the soap opera of everyday life.I have to go back, but my fancy was immediately attracted by an incredible Kalup Linzy video from which the still at the top of this post is excerpted, the entire backroom installation by Justin Samson and Muffy Brandt, the two shiny packing tape-like abstractions of Mathew Abbott, and Joseph Ari Aloi's fourteen gorgeous, almost compulsive, doodle-like (meant in the very best way) drawings massed on the east wall.
But I'm really, really sorry I missed that performance the opening night.
Justin Samson and Muffy Brandt Astral Projections, Aural Protection, and Transcendental Preparation (2004) in mixed media, found objects, painted wood, detail of installation
*see Perry Rubenstein's artist list, and click on Andrew Guenther; or check out the installation images on Brooklyn Fire Proof's site