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.
ArtChatter 