Brent Owens’ solo show at English Kills, The Gnastic Pursuit. — Photos courtesy of the artist.

English Kills, on Forrest St. just off of Flushing Ave., has become an influential gallery in Bushwick during the past three years, specialized in rough-edged, quasi-absurd contemporary art.  Its emphasis is not on sales; it rents out several spaces in the back to keep its overhead at bay.  This liberates the gallery to show some pretty weird stuff in an equally rough-edged, quasi-absurd space defined by exposed brick, plywood floors, and some areas of white-box-style sheetrock.

Brent Owens‘ first solo show, The Gnastic Pursuit (sic), 2009, is comprised of several hand-carved and painted wooden sculptures and wall pieces.  The figurative language of Owens’ sculptures comes from the (straight) adolescent boy’s bedroom: sneakers, vaginas, teeth, wigs, socks, fecal matter.  They recall the immature sense of humor standard to that age, but employ a high level of formal resolution and an intense work ethic that gives non sequitur statements and banal objects an uncommon seriousness.  Objects found in the woods and at your local convenience store abruptly protrude from hand-carved wood, aggressive text sits flippantly in the middle of otherwise garden-variety abstract images.  Owens employs a very physical, immediate technique, the large hardware remains visible, his self-taught hand defines their rough finish.

Gross. Click for more.

These idiosyncratic sculptures state their purpose transparently: Froze Socks, 2007, a plastic hanger sagging with resin-coated socks is a clear homage to jerking off; a switchblade comb is inserted into the top of Wig Mountain, 2009.  The most telling and unresolved object in the exhibition is Golden Brown Femme Fetale, 2009, a partial sculpture of a woman’s figure from navel to knee, made of a wood log, a chair leg, and a metal stand, decorated with tiny heart-shaped piece of cheap jewelry (rhinestones), pierced into the wood somewhere in between the regular location of the navel and clitoris, making an awkward monument to the adolescent boy’s uninformed worship of the female body.

And You, Please Just Keep Shutting Up, 2008, wooden construction palette from which hand-made grooves are gouged out and filled with brightly colored enamel paint in a predictable pattern reminiscent of 1980s abstract painting.  The words "PLEASE JUST KEEP SHUTTING UP," with the adjunct modifier nailed into the left side, "AND YOU," are etched into the wood in a round-edged font found in directional signs of forest preserve walking paths.  The negative space between the bars of wood, emphasized by the six inches the palette protrudes from the wall, is exceptionally beautiful against the spot-lit sections of highly saturated paint.  It is these moments of pure formal beauty that are the saviors of this exhibition.

Perhaps the most charming quality to these works is their absurdity (unexpected in a practice as time-consuming as woodcarving.)  Each work has a sort-of punch line, a disgusting element of surprise: a tree trunk is transformed into a waffle cone supporting plaster ice cream, meticulously decorated with hand-carved and painted wood "sprinkles," (Softee Log, 2009); the flying cloud of shit mounted to the wall has a fully developed set of molars in Toothy Smear, 2009.  In Dingbat, 2009, two orb-like shapes of plywood are secured together with a huge metal screw and heavy bolts plunged through their centers, and the resulting interior crevice is decorated with tiny thorn-like hairs, with a cartoony set of teeth (or dentures) nailed into place.  The clearest reference comes from the previous century: the Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim’s Object (Le Dejeuner en Fourrure), 1936.  Similar to Oppenheim’s repulsion-inciting fur-covered teacup, Owen transfigures simple wooden shapes into particularly hideous images of female genitalia.

Owens’ work can be summed up as a folk-art-making Appalachian whittler’s (clearly a role the artist assumes despite his Southern heritage) attempt at hyper-fashionable New York-based contemporary art.  The subject matter and insouciant sense of humor is all too familiar.  Owen’s work is simultaneously the dirty joke among boyhood friends, the stealing of Dad’s porn magazine, but also something more intriguing and harder to pin down.  Confusing juxtapositions, purposeful idiosyncrasy, and references to Feminist surrealism from his clearly male/heterosexual point of view make The Gnastic Pursuit both curious and a fascinating contribution to the conversation in the Bushwick art scene.

The Gnastic Pursuit runs through October 11.

English Kills Art Gallery
114 Forrest Street
Closing Reception: October 11, 2009, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Sat & Sun, 1-7pm