31GRAND

Let’s say Hieronymus Bosch lived in the late nineteenth century instead of the late fifteenth. He happened to, oh, I don’t know, procreate with another man named Henri Rousseau, and that young painter child decided to cross the Atlantic in favor of studying with the likes of Diego Rivera. The child pulled an Artemesia and was miraculously a girl, and then a Michael J. Fox and lived now. That’ll bring you up to speed on Francesca Lo Russo.

Francesca’s solo show at 31GRAND on Ludlow Street is a fusion of raw fantasy and social commentary. The highlighted piece, entitled I Want Everything And Now And Hot And Fast And Gone, is a bird’s eye view of a large barroom scene, complete with naked waitresses performing fire tricks, Apple geeks paying no attention but to their iPhones, a DJ being jerked off in the back, a shopping bag-clad woman eating a giant birthday cake at the bar (alone), and other weirdly intriguing creatures one might find lurking in a Lower East Side after-hours bar. Mac laptops curiously dot the place, and a stack of dynamite sits peacefully in the center of the room. There are other details not to be missed, such as the demonic, skull-torch-bearing baby figure standing in the lower right corner, the Virgin Mary statue next to the cash register, or the Scream-type skeleton playing the drums. It’s not a pretty sight, but it is certainly fun to explore, and no easy end to the imaginative play of social stereotypes or religious references.

Other works in the show are similarly detailed, and depict similar religious/Satanic iconography. One blatantly captures the horrors of the aftermath of Katrina; another conceives of a sort of wicked Eden/Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, where fresh fruit is turned into fruity cocktails and skeletons court drunken women.

Not all of the pictures are the same, though. A few smaller ones don’t depict scenes, and another is of a black-sunned town pool scene. Francesca’s references span religious, social, and art history, and her playfulness makes it worth the trip.

The Safe American Flag

Matthew Marks plays it relatively safe over the next couple of months with a show of 40 Jasper Johns drawings, some of which have never seen the harsh light of the public eye.

Although not a Johns fan myself, it’s impossible not to acknowledge and respect him for his Picasso-esque ability to create and proliferate at a high level. In the Marks collection, Johns produces a retrospective-like look at his own work. He incorporates images of maps, numbers, cross-hatchings, and naturally, his famous flags, mostly with a stark black-and-white palate. Good choice; too much color would detract from the variety and execution of individual motifs.

I’m personally glad the Johns show didn’t take on war politics, which would have been easy given the nature of his work. Can’t you just imagine someone turning his signature American flag into a turban/burqa/AK47 sheath/(insert-your-stereotypical-Muslim-accessory-here), if only for some minimal effect? Then again, this isn’t Chris Ofili we’re talking about here.

Johns stays true to his methodical approach, tried and true themes, and exploration of different media. The first few drawings evoke machinistic depictions of a somewhat Surrealist nature; one shows rather colorful “fruits” of Cubist-like noses and eyes hanging from a branch. In the following room, Johns borrows from Juan Gris (literally spelling out “From Juan Gris” in the lower left-hand corner), plays with abstract cross-hatching, and moves through a slew of other art historical references. In the back of the gallery, two rooms separate his famous metallic number works from other more colorful, geometrical (though not entirely abstract) works. Diamond-patterned reds, yellows, greens, and blues randomly recall court jesters.

Matthew Marks put on an elegant show, but quite frankly, I just can’t make myself like Johns’ work no matter how hard I try. Granted, I guess I’m not trying to hard. That’s the thing about art: you either like it or you don’t. We all have our safe bets; for me, Johns isn’t it.

A Trippy Afternoon

It’s a gray-white day in Manhattan, the sixth of the month of February, and both prematurely warm (61 degrees) and incredibly humid (flooding predicted). The underlying brightness of white light does my career-dependent eyes no good, so I buy some cheapo sunglasses on my walk across town to Chelsea.

Every time I go to Chelsea I am at total odds with myself. Let’s just say it’s not easy acting SoHo loft with my Lower East Side co-op pedigree—and that would be the Jewish pickles and Puerto Rican gang wars LES, not the Bernard Tschumi-towered hotspot of today. When I go to Chelsea, I literally try to pull off Vince with J. Crew and Louboutin with Charles David. I know I shouldn’t try to be something I’m not, blah blah blah, but that’s just the nature of the art world in Chelsea and there’s no way around it until you’re at the top, case closed.

As such, in attempting to recover from a fashionable stumble up the stairs to 303 Gallery, I attempt to recapture my cool by intensely focusing on the first painting I see and hope no one has noticed my fabulousness just yet. The exposition du jour (actually, January 12 through February 23) is by artist Karen Kilimnik, and apparently her ninth at 303 Gallery. In 2007, she showed at the Serpentine Gallery in London and Le Consortium in Dijon.

A few small bluish paintings hang on the walls, some rectangular and some round, which could easily replace—or rather, create—my bathroom window. The first painting is a pale shade of blue, with subtle, wispy white strokes; without titles to dictate my interpretation, I immediately reason it’s a painting of the sky, and then dismiss that idea as wholly unimaginative and entirely crude. Certainly, not the intention of a seasoned artist. It could also depict water, after all. Or maybe one square millimeter of the artist’s sister’s cat’s left eye while staring at a scampering white mouse. One can never be quite certain when assigning meaning to swathes of minimalist-inspired canvases.

I continue looking at the first canvas because I start to see the white “clouds” moving. I determine I’m crazy, blame it on my cheapo sunglasses, and watch a little longer, sans sunglasses. The paint, it turns out, is not moving. Obviously. Now I don’t know whether to attribute this phenomenon to my sunglasses, my singular intent on assigning meaning to the work, or the genius of the artist herself.

Mildly intrigued, I decide that the best way to figure out the answer is to see if Ms. Kilimnik’s other works achieve anything similar. They didn’t. The transition from the first to second room is mirrored by the thematic transition from the air to earth element: the second room depicts mountain scenes in Monet-like series studies, with and without greenery and containing different levels of detail. A glittering, thumbprint-sized smear of diamond dust next to the first painting literally spark(l)ed my interest—was it part of the show? Was it, perhaps, related to the crystal chandelier hanging in this room of drab landscapes? Am I tripping, or just wearing my sunglasses again? Another quest for answers: if there’s diamond dust in the third room, I reason, it must be part of the show.

[Some oops-the-camera-fell-and-took-a-crappy-picture-of-the-sky photographs hung in the corridor between the second and third rooms. According to the Gallery’s press release, they “investigate the sinister environmental threats of global warming.” They didn’t fool me, however. These are the types of artifacts that novice contemporary art viewers speak of when they utter the words “my kid could do that.” In fact, their dogs could. I thus decided to ignore them.]

Three smooth, light-green paintings hang on the far wall of the final room, each with the same air of wispy white brushstrokes that the initial blue painting had. On the opposite wall hangs one smaller work of dark greens; a wash of royal blue sneaking out from behind the greens doesn’t quite go as far as to provide a sense of ethereal illumination, but does provide an oxymoronic sense of shallow depth. No diamond dust on the wall, unfortunately, but there is another chandelier, placed perfectly at head-bumping height (stated as such for obvious reasons). No gallery, no matter how snobbishly unfriendly toward visitors, would light its space with a chandelier meant to knock out its guests. I therefore came to my conclusion: the chandeliers, and glitter by extension, must be part of the show.

Karen Kilimnik’s work is a mixture of the mundane and the fanciful. The ability of the uncanny to intrigue never seems to fail, and Kilimnik’s diamond dust and chandeliers interspersed among minimalist, landscapey canvases necessarily provokes. Any additional diamond dust would have proved fatal for blatancy of intent, and any less would have put visitors to sleep. Still, the trippiest part of my afternoon was those swirling clouds. Try getting some cheapo sunglasses, and you’ll see.