BOS: ‘Gods of Mars’ at English Kills
Left, Brent Owens’ Meatball Sweater; right, Don Pablo Pedro’s disturbing work.
Taking its title from the second of Edgar S. Burrough’s classic 12-book science fiction series, Basroom, "The Gods of Mars" at English Kills is a solid group show curated by artist Phoenix Lights with video, installation art, and some really massive paintings.
In the third chapter of Burrough’s book, one of the main characters, Tars Tarkas, (the Jeddak of Thark, duh) has a typically Martian laugh to himself, thinking of the pithy human species. Burroughs describes it as "not an hysterical laugh, but rather the genuine expression of the pleasure they [Martians] derive from the things that move Earth men to loathing or to tears."
The artists included in "The Gods of Mars" seem to be in on the same joke. The series of alien artifacts and documents on display, each stranger than the next, keep a distant remove from the mundacities of day-to-day existence on earth. Each work seems to lightly mock or surpass the hum-ho sentiments of ordinary Earthling men. Flaunting the rules of gravity and good taste, Brent Owen’s Meatball Sweater hangs ominously on the wall, its symmetry recalling some carefully arranged sacrifice. A small painting by Lenny Reibstein called Afterbirth is the creation story of a scrap-heaped planet starting over again. An excellent swamp of a landscape in acrylic and oils, it includes an abandoned baby and a crotch shot, both perhaps emanating from toxic waste.
Peter Dobill’s Drumaction was a hypnotizing video of a tribal leader from a parallel humanoid universe, and the ever-prescient Don Pablo Pedro documents what Kama-Sutra will be like for a future race of human-looking cannibals. His depraved scroll paintings, mostly of pasty beasts defiling each other, are my favorites, although he is also a sculptor and mixed-media artist. He had another work in the Fortress to Solitude show curated by Guillermo Creus, and will be doing a solo show at English Kills on August 1st. Distopia, painful metamorphosis, and alien cruelty — overall a great show to see on a sunny day in Bushwick.
English Kills Art Gallery
113 Forrest
