Spring Art to See on the L.E.S.

As the long, hard winter of 2011 finally comes to an end, the galleries of the Lower East Side seek to ameliorate what ails you. Ecstatic, candy-colored release for those just itching to run outside and play, as well as more delicate fare for the snow-shocked. Eleven Rivington has a group show with a light touch on view. New Shadow Old Legs has a quiet allure; the suggestive tactility of the mainly textile-based work draws you in. Alan Shields is invoked the exhibition title and press material, but I would look more to artists such as Frank Stella and Helen Frankenthaler for kindred spirits. The material mysteries continue at James Fuentes LLC with the Alison Knowles solo survey, Clear Skies All Week. Knowles is one of the founding members—and first female participant—of Fluxus. The debt artists such as Geoffrey Farmer and Gareth Moore owe to Knowles is evident in her shambolic urban archeology. The sculptural groupings of found materials are deeply compelling and suggestive of child-like collections of objects of symbolic importance, items gathered for their (imagined) magical weight.

On Stellar Rays offers the thorny work of Maria Petschnig’s Erolastika. Petschnig came across a series of erotic photos and was put into contact with their maker, Viktor. She subsequently was granted access to his process and, eventually, submitted to it herself. With Erolastika, the artist deftly negotiates potentially exploitative territory. In contrast to the work of Laurel Nakadate, Petschnig truly tries to reckon with a culture of sad as opposed to reveling in it through documenting the surprisingly labored and banal nature of Viktor’s activity and by virtue of the reciprocity of her practice, photographs taken by Viktor of the artist in a sexy Santa fantasy gear (all vaguely heartbreaking). The basement-level installation, suggestive of Viktor’s at-home pornography studio, is visceral to the point of unnerving.

Meanwhile at CANADA, Dadarhea is a hyperactive neon spectacle with mixed results. The show is a product of the “wild” group collaboration of artists Devin Flynn, Fran Spiegel, Takeshi Murata, Joe Grillo, Naomi Fisher, Michael Williams and Jessie Gold (to name a few). In the videos, paintings, sculptural works and installations, your 80s childhood becomes fodder for the psychedelic abjection of the digital age. With this inward-looking dada of the dispersed self, the paradigm of free culture and productive theft rules. At times, however, it feels as though the products of such collective explorations are better left in the studio

On the opposite side of the spectrum, infinite instant by f.p. boué at Participant, Inc. is a bland show that fails to convince. The press materials assert that the work is informed by the relationship (and frequent disparity) between the concept and the lived reality of architecture. Given the gallery’s location in the rapidly changing Lower East Side, it should resonate; however, the exhibition as a whole feels like a tepid intellectual exercise. On the other hand, Generally by Paul Gabrielli at Invisible Exports is an example of a more successful methodology. The “deconstructive sculptures”—a flashlight affixed to a closed circuit camera, an air freshener tapped to a soap dispenser—suggest notions of safety and surveillance. But it is the comedic-pathetic relationship of aspiration between the things used that makes the work memorable.

Over at NP Contemporary Art Center, Robert Knoke’s This Is Not speaks to a different kind of aspiration. Knoke’s lyrical, intense ink drawings of beautiful people are a feast for the eyes if not the intellect. But, here, it works: the German artist has a way with the shifting, shimmering surface of things. Moving on to terrible beauty, Botany Bay by Borden Capalino at Ramiken oscillates between the very real and the decidedly totemic. Referencing Star Trek and British colonial expansion and featuring some surly snakes, this smart, funny show is a promising solo debut from the artist and exciting enough to shake the winter blahs off the any art lover.

Gallery Information

11 Rivington
11 Rivington Street
http://www.elevenrivington.com/
New Shadow Old Legs
March 10 – April 10, 2011

James Fuentes
55 Delancey Street
http://www.jamesfuentes.com/
Alison Knowles
Clear Skies All Week
February 23 – April 3, 2011

On Stellar Rays
133 Orchard Street
http://onstellarrays.com
Maria Petschnig
Erolastika
February 5 – March 20, 2011

CANADA
55 Chrystie Street
http://www.canadanewyork.com/
Dadarhea
February 25 – March 20, 2011

Participant, Inc.
253 East Houston Street
http://www.participantinc.org/
f.p. boué
infinite instant
March 6 – April 10, 2011

Invisible Exports
14A Orchard Street
http://www.invisible-exports.com/
Paul Gabrielli
Generally
February 18 – March 27, 2011

NP Contemporary Art Center
131 Chrystie Street
http://www.npcac.org/
Robert Knoke
This Is Not
March 10 – May1, 2011

Ramiken
389 Grand Street
http://www.ramikencrucible.com
Borden Capalino
Botany Bay
March 1 – May 1, 2011

Images

Installation view of Clear Skies All Week by Alison Knowles (courtesy James Fuentes LLC) (attached)

Digital video still from De Niña a Mujer (2010) by Maria Petschnig, currently on view as a part of Erolastika (courtesy On Stellar Rays): http://onstellarrays.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/1021.jpg

Installation view of Dadarhea (courtesy of CANADA): http://www.canadanewyork.com/wp/files/exhibitions/2011/dadarhea-february-25-march-20/DADAinstA.jpg

Untitled (Camera) (2011) by Paul Gabrielli on view in Generally (courtesy Invisible Exports): http://www.invisible-exports.com/exhibitions/25_gabrielli/pg_gen_4.html

Installation view of Botany Bay by Borden Capalino at Ramiken (courtesy Ramiken): http://www.ramikencrucible.com/storage/4.jpeg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1299712007573