Peter Fox Big Self Portrait 2009 acrylic on canvas 73" x 73"
small acrylic by Fox for which I don't have the information
Aron Namenwirth Party City 2006-2008 48" x 60" x 3"
installation view of John Bjerklie's "When A River Changes Its Course"
[a more detailed view]
The "tour" which began in Soho continues into a third day with a look at some shows in Williamsburg galleries.
Peter Fox has shifted from abstractions to representational and text works with the colorful and gently-risible show, "Moving Target", currently hosted by The Hogar Collection, but his trademark relief technique, which uses countless multicolored blobs ("blobilism"?), survives unaltered. Curiously I've just noticed that the image I first thought would be the only one I'd use to illustrate the show happens to be the only black and white painting. Also, while I really like the new direction, I've now decided to add an image of a recently-completed piece I saw hanging in the gallery's office. It's only about ten inches high, but it shows that Fox abstractions haven't yet run out of things to say.
Aron Namenwirth's dynamite show at VertexList has been extended through February 28, but by appointment only. No sweat, that, and it's definitely worth the phone call. For access to the Bayard Street space call Namenwirth at 917-301-6680 or 917-301-0306. This beautiful body of work at first suggests little more that simple blown-up pixilated photographic imagery perfectly rendered in paint, but this elegant, precisely-drawn simplicity is deceptive. The artist starts with small JPEGS which frequently depict political or spiritual figures. I don't pretend to understand how he has done it, but some readers may get further with the help of excerpts from an interview the artist had last December with Erika Knerr. Namenwirth is describing what's going on in the painting shown above. He had just said that another piece (which appears to be just as abstract) has four images in it, and that each one occupies a different grid, meaning there are four grids in the final work. He goes on to say that "Party City" also has four images, and that they compete with one another, in the end becoming the brilliant blur you see:
Aron Namenwirth: Basically the images all occupy one of these four pixels so there are four images sitting next to each other on four separate grids and they just obliterate each other.
“Party City” is [composed of] four images, a Chinese stockbroker, guys with suits with golden shovels breaking ground for the Chinese version of the NASDAQ, the building is designed by Rem Koolhaus, and a group of soldiers from Darfur with shovels and guns. All these images are off the internet. The fourth image is a group of people, friends of my mom, Cynthia Bloom, at her memorial service. I planted all these flowers in the sand, so all these people where around the flowers in the sand thinking about her.
I don't know what to say here about John Bjerklie's installation at Parker's Box, "When A River Changes Its Course", especially since you're probably going to want to visit it - and I say "visit" advisably. Most of us may have seen the inside of a gallery turned into something of a dump more than once before, but this show, with the distinction of its being littered with old TV sets, both working and clearly defunct, will probably hook you if you manage to come in while our host, Bjerklie, and [insert name here] are engaged in a quite shrewdly-mad conversation about art while inserted inside two separate screens. Meaty stuff, but lots of fun.