"Girl Scout Cookies OG," Michael Manning
is one of New York's most relevant art galleries, and its curator, former Deitch Projects director Kathy Grayson, is one of the best of her generation. That combination makes for a tall order of consistently great shows from the still-new 4,000-square-foot space on Bowery, and might be why Post-Analog Painting — with its several hits but one or two misses — was kind of disappointing.
The hits first: This work by Michael Manning made me think of Cy Twombly, graffiti tags and the way neon signs blur in photographs. It was my favorite of the show.
Trudy Benson's “Movement in Stripes” is a solid example of what this show aspired to do — show how contemporary abstract painting can borrow from tradition and digital technology without falling for the tropes of Zombie Formalism. If the work seems like something from a late-’80s Minnie Mouse cartoon, you should see it in person — all that monochrome and pattern mash-up comes across as much more sophisticated when you see the deliberate but intuitive texture of the paint. And while we're talking color palette, You Are So Nashville If your first thought upon seeing this piece is that Third Man Records needs to scoop it up quick.
Josh Reames' canvases are enormous, and that makes their seemingly throwaway mess of iconography seem even weirder and more like James Rosenquist than MS Paint circa Windows 95. The color palette reminds me of Hypercolor T-shirts and white jeans, which could be either good or bad depending on your perspective.
The color of the untitled diptych by Michael Staniak has a similar candy-colored feel that's both moody and mystical in person — that texture is like marshmallow fluff or a stuccoed building facade. But they were also weirdly pricey — $22K a piece, if the price list I picked up on the way out was accurate.
The worst parts of the show were also terribly similar, and I hope doesn't speak to a larger trend in the works: Both Rachel Lord and Jeanette Hayes make works that incorporate digital age icons and traditional paintings. Lord's remind me of the reworked flea market landscapes that populate the home goods section of Urban Outfitters, with Angry Birds on Bob Ross-style vistas. Similarly, Hayes puts Sailor Moon on top of Willem DeKooning's Women paintings, and called the series DeMooning. The Hayes works remind me of some of my favorite social media mash-ups like the Kim Kierkegaardashian Twitter account or that series of Kanye West quotes super-imposed onto New Yorker cartoons. That's just about the only good thing I can say about these, and I was seriously confused by their inclusion in such an otherwise strong show. I mean, I'm into Wayne White's word paintings as much as any other art-loving Nashvillian, but it's like he was the Pearl Jam that spawned Lord and Hayes' Creed.
See photos of the work, as well as several installation shots, on The Hole's website. The exhibit is up through May 24.
