The scene outside Factory Fresh’s “Brooklyn Bailout Burlesque.” Images courtesy of the gallery.
The show must go on.
This the inscription and thematic center of the new Factory Fresh exhibition, and a phrase that must travel the long way around to avoid double entendre associations in a week where "death panels" and town hall hysterics ruled the news. No, the show that must go on here is not the push for health care reform — though in the realm of freelance artistry, the subject is not irrelevant — but largely the show is art itself.
The "Brooklyn Bailout Burlesque," they call it, and what a stunning creation Jim Avignon’s eponymous centerpiece is. A Betty Boop-like flapper atop a table, wrapped in a large roll of American dollars while performing a fan dance. All sorts of bright suggestive imagery surround her, from a smoke-spewing house carrying a briefcase, to a soporific feline perched on a stack of books. While straining not to over-read the work for meaning, one cannot help but see in it an essence of 2009: volatile marketplaces, crises of environment and culture, and amidst these things a looming question of where and how art can manage stability — let alone revenue — without a bailout of its own.
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Avignon’s "Burlesque" is not unaccompanied in these qualities. Factory Fresh was packed on Friday; in the gallery halls, on the patio out back where live music could be enjoyed, and out front where smokers and others took a breather from the stuffy building. The bottles of Yuengling went fast, and harried staff members were seen running back and forth to put out various fires, but then, I suppose these are problems of a good variety on the opening night of an exhibition.
Over sixty works are on display in the three-room gallery, an international collection of mostly paintings by Jon Burgeman, Daniel Dueck, Asuka Ohsawa, Roman de Milk & Wodka, Ema, and Christine Young (in addition to Mr. Avignon). There is ample variation here to maintain captivation, but one is compelled more so to call attention to the unusually solid cohesion (high praise to Factory Fresh on that). Ema’s gorgeous dual "Burlesque Dancer" pieces immediately stand out, as does her use of color in a tableau of five intricate portraits assembled on a wood-panel background. Ms. Ohsawa’s series of fourteen square piggybanks, entitled "iSave," are appropriately shown on two parallel shelves in the narrow office room which connects the two main gallery rooms. Frugality in theme, frugality in presentation.
This exhibition proves the effectiveness of individuality within thematic constraints (or "suggestion," if you prefer). What’s more, this is art of our time, and for our time. We may watch Congressional hearings or cable news spats, read analysis by economists (The Guardian last week wondered if we are watching the birth of a new "Lost Generation"), but an argument exists that these measures fall short in painting the full picture of this, or any, epoch. It is art that one is wise to keep an eye on, art which depicts the "inward significance" of which Aristotle spoke. Faulkner describes it in a manner reminiscent of fossils: "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again, since it is life."
All this is great fodder for the viewer and critic to wax philosophic, but is understandably little comfort to the recession-struck artist. One could understand then an exhibition of more melancholy display, but the creators of "Bailout Burlesque" have chosen instead an admirable optimism: "Between high art and crumbling economy there is a common ground for inexpensive works, keenly tailored for broad appeal," says the description on the Factory Fresh website. This is artistic pragmatism; a thorn in the side of the purist, perhaps, but for this group of artists a clever and practical packaging that addresses the lethargic economy head-on, and even in some cases satirizes it.
In this vein they are not alone. Artists everywhere are having to stretch and re-think strategies of self-promotion. As reported in the Times, filmmakers are going more and more viral to attract attention from penny-pinching no-risk studios. Musicians have been forced to experiment with new strategies to channel the pirating trends – which don’t appear to be subsiding anytime soon — into exposure that might lead to actual income.
And still, hanging on the wall, is Avignon’s "Brooklyn Bailout Burlesque." She stands on her chair, stocking-clad legs in motion, her fans waving in the air, her lips as red as the ink across our States; her big round eyes are staring right at you, and you can’t help but feel she’s trying to get your attention, that she might dance a little while longer.
"Brooklyn Bailout Burlesque" runs through August 30, 2009; open 1-7pm, Wednesday-Sunday.
Stephen August 18th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I would like to highlight the following quotations which I feel need to be addressed:
“There is ample variation here to maintain captivation, but one is compelled more so to call attention to the unusually solid cohesion (high praise to Factory Fresh on that).”
Do we really expect so little of the resident curators and gallery directors of our neighborhood, as to be impressed when all the artists included in a group show are dealing with the same subject? We’re actually going to note the success of an “unusually solid cohesion”? Not only has this article strayed from a critical discussion of work in the show or its curatorial intention, but this statement is buoyed solely on the critics sense of style, thus useless and inflammatory.
Lets expect a little bit more from group shows; they need to be ‘curated’, not just installed. Lets expect a little more from critics: they need to think, analyze, interpret, and when necessary, judge, not issue pats on the back.
“‘Between high art and crumbling economy there is a common ground for inexpensive works, keenly tailored for broad appeal,’ says the description on the Factory Fresh website. This is artistic pragmatism; a thorn in the side of the purist, perhaps, but for this group of artists a clever and practical packaging that addresses the lethargic economy head-on, and even in some cases satirizes it.”
This statement by Factory Fresh is incorrect; first of all, the definitions of “high” and “low” art have really been defunct since the early 1970s, rendering them in this twenty-first century conversation meaningless. What they mean to say is that in between contemporary art gallery prices and “street” art prices, there is a profitable median that may now be appealing to an art dealer down-on-his-luck.
Neither is this beneficial to the artists that exhibit in Bushwick (driving their selling prices down) nor is it beneficial to the galleries that exhibit here; thus, not pragmatic.
Many Bushwick galleries maintain a stringent and exciting program of showing challenging, exciting, and unmitigated contemporary art. Why must we blur those programs in with “street art” one might find on Broadway in Soho, or in an antique shop in the East Village, or as a mural on the wall of a bar — contexts that by definition are void of critical thought and cultural significance.
“It is art that one is wise to keep an eye on, art which depicts the ‘inward significance’ of which Aristotle spoke.”
Invoking the work of Aristotle in a discussion of contemporary art is brave at best; is there not a more relevant, perhaps more recent philosopher we could discuss? Invoking the word of Aristotle in a discussion of the work exhibited at Factory Fresh last Friday night is unthinkable. Yes, art has historically mirrored life. Yes, Factory Fresh is attempting to address our contemporary time (e.g., the recession). This usage of Aristotle — and worse, Faulkner (in the same paragraph, no less) — is a claw reaching out of the grave of mediocrity in which this article is buried, attempting to grasp the root of something meaningful. Leave Aristotle out of it, and attempt to construct your own meaning.
Gregg August 18th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
we need more spaces like pocket utopia and privateer in the neighborhood and less spaces like this churning out more and more mindless crap looking to capitalize on the current economic climate. barf.
Monica August 18th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Setting qualifications for Aristotle references and dissing street art sounds an awful lot like “high art” and “low art” to me.
Dresden August 19th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Art?
(F)art.