By: Gallery Crawler
A still from David Kagan’s Bunny Boy Quadrilogy.
This year’s “MAs Curate MFAs” show at Hunter College is a great antidote to the fiscally-obsessed fair circuit and its aftermath that hijacks the New York art scene every March. Visitors to the Hunter exhibition get to see a wide array of contemporary sculpture, installations, paintings, photographs and films without having to meet the searching gazes of bored gallerists or worry about the health of the industry. The opening of this year’s installment felt particularly festive in comparison to the funereal tone of the Amory, located just a few avenues to the west.
David Kagan’s film, Bunny Boy Quadrilogy, was far and away my favorite work; this may say more about my perverse sense of humor than strength of the film, but I hope not. Bunny Boy, shown on three walls simultaneously, is a Cartoon-Network-style mash up of broad comedic skits, loosely held together by the recurring appearances of the main character, Bunny Boy, and his mother. The film’s cast comprises human actors, including Kagan, and Kagan’s puppet creations. Though all of the antics of the Bunny Boy company are oddly amusing, the real fun of the film, as the wall text tactfully explains, is the “parodying [of] artist[s] who boil down to a recognizable cliché.” In the film, this translates to a maniacally evil, bedazzled, talking skull à la Damien Hirst, a Jake and Dinos Chapman-esque puppet with huge bulging eyes, and a singing Jeff Koons.
The already lowbrow tone of these parodies is consciously lowered further by scenes involving human-puppet sex, vomiting puppets and a conspicuously male transvestite giving birth. Ridiculous? Yes. Disgusting? Frequently. Hilarious? Completely. As I took a seat to watch the film, a young man turned to me and said, “I can’t stop watching this. I just can’t look away.” He looked both vaguely horrified and a little gleeful. After watching for only a few minutes, I understood. Call it schadenfreude, but after Damien Hirst’s spectacularly gauche “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” Auction at Sotheby’s London in September, I think Hirst—and his ilk—are due for Kagan’s brand of leveling.
I was also impressed with Lori Merhige’s installation entitled, We’re Not in Sodom Anymore, composed of a sculpture of a blue gingham canopy or shower curtain and a large pile of red glitter. Yuliya Lanina’s curio cabinets perched on mannequin’s legs were intense, as were Yashua Klos’ technically masterful, giant woodblock prints.
I initially dimissed Julio Grinblatt’s Cielito Lindo Series as boring minimalist canvases, until my companion insisted that I read the wall text. What I took for a set of square blue canvases, were actually photographs Grinblatt had taken of the sky. After snapping the photos, Grinblatt took the film to developers in three different cities and told them to give him, “a beautiful sky.” Each resulting image is a different shade of cerulean, reflecting not only the film developer’s different ideas about what makes a beautiful sky, but also our differing ideas of the concept of beauty. Armed with this knowledge, the series is still visually minimalist, but conceptually loaded.
There is so much to see and hear in the maze-like rooms of the Times Square Gallery, that visitors can quickly become overwhelmed. This year’s show, in particular, is an embarrassment of riches. As my companion so succinctly put it, while standing in front of a black bird made of yarn that flopped repeatedly, and rather disconcertingly, against the floor, “There is a lot of weird and amazing shit here.” This exhibition is not to be missed!
“MAs Curate MFAs” at the
Take the 1, 2, 3, 7, A, C, E, N, Q, R, S or W train to Times Square/42nd Street
Gallery hours: Tues-Sat, 1-6pm
Exhibition Website: www.hunter.cuny.edu/art/mascuratemfas_2009/index.html
This gallery is definitely out of the way, but the show is worth a visit. I agree that Kagan's "Bunny Boy Quadilogy" is amazing, but there's quite a bit of great work here, which doesn't always happen in an MFA exhibition.
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