When I woke up in a dank puddle of oily sludge behind the engine room door in the hull of the prison ship I thought “wow. That was a great show!” The week before my birthday bender I had gone to see “THINGS TO COME... Visions of the future, dark and bright” which opened at Bold Hype gallery on September 9. I think it was the drawing of the decrepit old woman with chigger bites all over her naked body by Brendan Danielsson that really stuck out in my memory at the time. When I realized I was chained at the ankle to a sump pump and no one would answer back to my screams I really felt like I could relate to that piece. It spoke to me in the moment. And then of course the rest of the show came rushing back and I smiled my first smile since the burlap sack was pulled off my head.
Reveling in the delightful recollections of a gallery evening well spent I adjusted my bikini, gathered my composure and made a special note to mention Nicole Gastonguay and her knit robots if I ever made it out alive. Which I did. So here you go…
If you know me half as well as you tell your friends that you do you know that I am a huge fan of robots. My cousin used to tell me that we were both ¼ robot on my grandfather’s side of the family. I should mention that the robots in this show were not real robots. These robots were colorfully rendered in fluffy clean yarn robots who shared a shelf with a fluffy yarn bible and a real glass jar of fluffy yarn pickles. I couldn’t help but notice that the bad robot had a human brain but the artist was not to be found at the opening so unless you’ve already had this conversation with Nicloe, the mystery as to why will live on forever.
Other artists in the show included, Doug Boehm, Chris Buzelli, Paul Chatem, R.S. Connett, Bob Dob, Greg Hergert, Douglas Hoffman, Charlie Immer, Colin Johnson, Jason Limon, Dan May, Heiko Muller, Nathan Ota, Shaunna Peterson, Leah Palmer Preiss, Chris Ryniak, Scott Scheidly, Joe Scarano, Jim (Ojimbo) Sheely, Allison Sommers, Alix Soubiran, Nathan Spoor, Aron Wiesenfeld who had some amazingly figurative charcoal work. The show is up until Thursday so hurry over before its too late.
Anyhow, by the time I managed to jimmy open the lock on my ankle chains and wrestle an antique Type 100 (Hyaku-shiki kikan-tanju) submachine gun away from the nice man guarding the door I was face to face with a whole new series of questions and complex emotions. How many guards were on the other side of the hatch? How much time would I have to find my bearings once I escaped back to the jungle? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about The Space between Reference and Regret at Friedrich Petzel Gallery?
Okay now I know what your thinking, “Focus Avery, did you take the safety off the Hyaku-shiki?” and your right, I was totally winging it and could have been recaptured at any moment. I needed a plan and I was running out of time. I had to think quick…and so instead I thought about John Cage. He was huge influence on the show at Petzel. I like shows that are about the spaces they are curated in. When shows become site specific they begin to transcend regular exhibitions and starts to become experiences. John Cage used to talk about how reducing something to its bare elements doesn’t bind it to the aesthetics of nothingness and each artist in their own way addresses this idea throughout the space masterfully.
Im not saying it’s a perfect show,. For a show about site specific minimalism there was a lot of work in the program. Also, my fist mentor used to say that if you cant make it good make it big and if you cant make it big make it red. Its hard to let that lesson go. Ultimately I thought the show was perfectly installed and say what you will about big and red- Philippe Parreno’s balloons were pretty cool. I did have an incredible urge to pop one on my way out. But I digress…
As I dove off of the bow of the exploding prison ship I screamed and emptied the submachine gun into the darkness. I never looked back. I swam to shore and scavenged off the countryside for 3 days before I made contact at the rendezvous point… Actually you know what? I think you get the point. Here are some images that can only be described as interesting enough to take a photo of but not so much to write about. Oh, Also I obviously survived my harrowing experience so awesome to that. I just needed to give a shout out to Threejay for filing the missing persons report. I never would have been able to skydive back into American airspace without you.
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