Gallery Project, October 2007

Opening last night at the Gallery Project of Signs, Symbols, Gestures.

The show, as always, was nicely hung in the open space, giving each piece room.

IMHO, best pieces: two photo portraits by Titus Heagins of North Carolina and a piece by Claudette Jocelyn Stern, a fun compilation of found objects; “not my favorites”: well, without giving names, see below.

Favorites:

The portraits by Mr. Heagins (Machette Fillé, Sodo 80 and Madam, Sodo 80) were what portraits should be, with the depth of the intimacy captured being as much a function of what the photo allows the viewer to bring as of the look and circumstances of the subject.

Baker’s Dozen: found objects in each of the cups in a table-like found object which itself looked like some industrial muffin tin. Fun with not a jot of the pretense in most of the other work in the show.

Not my favorites:

• 3 pieces, each made of 12 squares of old wood, each with a hobo marking. Next to the pieces, a legend of each symbol and and its meaning. With nothing open to any interpretation and not being what one would call “art of execution” either, the only thing left was the pattern in the grain of wood.
• A mixed media piece which, try as it might, seemed almost a forgery of what might be some real outsider art.

In between my faves and my not faves were the rest: large digital prints with no soul and pieces deconstructing symbols and signs, occasionally juxtaposing them in ways that tried very hard to be “unexpected”, which, if I’m not mistaken, has been done before.

No one has, IMHO, done signs and symbols better than Luigi Serafini in the Codex Seraphinianus. See its unofficial web site.