I Wish I Could Write About Shows

I Have A Soft Spot For Art That, In Terms Of Subject Matter And Material, Is In Bad Taste.

The Debut Show, “second Lives: Remixing The Ordinary,” Is Supposed To Be About How Artists Reuse Humble Or Unusual Materials. There’s Good Work Here, But Much Of What’s On View Is Actually More About Obsession And Repetition: A Couch Made Out Of 3,500 Quarters, A Necklace Composed Of 100 Handgun Triggers. The Building, Too, Seems Caught Between Wanting To Be An Object Of Decorative Delectation And Making An Architectural Statement.

I See Artists Bored By Light-without-heat, Irked At Gigantic Galleries' Pushing Out Art-as-product, Leaving Behind The Over Determined For The Undetermined, Guided By Interior Voices And Bringing Us Out Of A Long Tunnel To New Blueness.

In Some Ways Lawler Is A Conceptual Diane Arbus. She's A Stalker Who Takes Advantage Of Situations. She Pulls Back Curtains, Causing Normal Things To Look Freakish And The Freakish To Turn Mundane.

The Art Gods Cooked Up Something Special For James Ensor.