By: Laura Phipps
Jim Avignon and Jon Burgerman perform Anxiety Broom at the opening of “Anxiety Room” at Factory Fresh on February 12th.
While the opening reception of most gallery shows is not the best time to actually experience artwork, in the case of Factory Fresh’s latest show “Anxiety Room” the opening was a work of performance art to be experienced. Jon Burgerman and Jim Avignon, British and German, respectively, but often working in New York, presented their first collaboration: paintings and a drawing/painting performance Anxiety Broom that took place at the opening. Both artists are known for their design, illustration and multimedia work: Bugerman with Kidrobot and his book Pens Are My Friends and Avignon with his Attack Delay series and one-man techno band Neoangin. The variety of the artists’ production methods and relationship to markets is explicitly reflected by the installation of the work.
The relationship to the market is seen in the “store front” quality of the gallery’s space itself and is reinforced by the work. In the large front windows of the corner gallery hang cardboard cut-outs of animal masks seemingly “on display.” And just within the front room, the “store” shows a bit of the creative display often seen in Williamsburg boutiques—a large leafless branch upside down hung with small painted cardboard cutouts of various objects such as: foodstuffs, cell phone, pills, and bones. These objects are repeated in the paintings on the walls of the front room rendered in a limited palette of red, pink, blue, light blue, black, and white as collaborative works by Burgerman and Avignon. Hung quasi-salon style the symbols in the paintings relate the artists’ ideas of the anxiety and the stresses of our modern lives—ringing cell phones, skulls and honking cars—through anthropomorphic characters, frenetic graphic patterning, and layering of scenes.
The subject of modern stresses is directly addressed in the back room where the paintings and drawings take on color not seen in the works of the front room. A series of collaborative drawings under the label “Board of Anxieties” illustrate in a humorous and graphic way the specific worries often experienced (hyper inflation, doctors, ex-girlfriends), but rarely admitted (too many emails, no toilets, getting fat). Large paintings on their own wall by Avignon diverge from the dexterous, graffiti-like style of the collaborative works and, instead, are touched with the overriding anxiety of dream-like states similar to those explored by Surrealism. These paintings appear to be a completely separate body of work and are less engaging than the collaborative pieces of the front room or the light-hearted (seemingly) drawings of “Board of Anxieties” because of their heavy-handed color.
Both artists have a history of performing in public and when “Anxiety Broom” began they got right to it, using first paint pens and then paint and brushes to cover the surface of the wall with words, objects, and characters also seen in the free-standing paintings and also within the color palette of the front room’s paintings. The moment that the artists strapped drawing pads to the back of their heads and drew on each other provided a moment of comic relief to the entertainment of the performance. The level of anxiety suggested by the live performance, as well as a few of the characters drawn (the fat cat art collector is an example), was echoed by music that mixed in audio elements of sports competitions, nature sounds, and the economic crash. The audience remained engaged throughout most of the performance and the energy that the anxious unpredictability of the artists’ paintings suggested was palpable. Though the performance was a one-time event, the evidence of it remains as a part of the exhibition and its collaborative spirit remains to lend the show an air of anxious excitement.
Anxiety Room: Jon Burgerman and Jim Avignon runs through March 15th
Factory Fresh
1053 Flushing Avenue , Brooklyn
Take the L train to Morgan
Gallery hours: W-Sat, 1-7pm
Gallery website: www.factoryfresh.net
Artists’ Websites: www.johnburgerman.com
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