I have to say that I'm not usually one who likes photography, but I must praise Betsy VanLangen's set of photos for stealing the show. Burnt cigarettes around the neck like a noose, covered in the tape ripped out of a cassette, contoured by paint or simply impaling a cherry pie with her tongue, each photograph has a composition that pulls you in, and an atmosphere with just enough mystery to keep you hypnotized.
A piece that caught my interest, for reasons I couldn't find by the time I had to move on, was John Amelchenko's "Anticipated Nostalgia Who Who Leaves Unnamed [sic.]" It's a work of simply two black triangles with some transparent drapery hanging over, but for whatever reason I kept thinking about it while walking around the exhibit.
Another work that attracted me was (tentatively, I hope) labeled "KAM: Bottles and Bones." These were interesting sculptures designed to look like configurations of bones, and then painted white. The underside of these forms were painted in vibrant color, as to deflect colored light outward onto the white base they were set on. It made for a subtle effect.
I want to mention Erik Schoonebeek's "Feel the Wall" simply for the presense it had. It did not, unfortunately, have enough command to make me actually feel the wall.
Eileen Behnke had a very fleshy look to the characters in her painting "The Things You Do For Love." These characters are apparently from a reality TV show, and I guess they are competing for love. They are all so sickly looking and so unnatractive in this painting that I find their run-down appearance to match the brushy style of painting so appropriately. I think they're supposed to be glorious and we're supposed to envy them, but the painting makes them look like they're at death's door.
There was a gigantic painting on the far wall, noted only as "Put Label Here." It's a huge canvas, not completely covered in paint, not even covered in gesso. It's paint on a huge canvas, but the brush strokes have so much vigor and energy across the huge breadth of space that you feel the artist exhausted themself just finishing a line.
Overall, I have to say that this show had a lot of good entries, and a lot of entries that just meant absolutely nothing. A few paintings seemed like they were stolen from highschool students. The curation was all over the place, but the best pieces of the show didn't suffer for it. The best held their own, while the secondary pieces sunk into the abyss of obscurity.
