The Washington Spectator/New Talent
Ferguson, Andrew
THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR NEW TALENT Last month, while gallery-hopping through the Dupont Circle New Talent Exhibition, I noticed that most dealers distributed a paragraph or two about the works on...
...God," said Ralph at last...
...Tom Scott, whose "Facades of the High Culture Establishment" was at the Touchstone Gallery, also works the private collector audience...
...But the question that won't go away is, Where is the object...
...AF 52 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1987...
...Because these things are out there anyway," said Ralph, as his girlfriend nodded...
...Well," said Ralph, "it exists in relation to the object...
...The questions are endless, really...
...To be fair, most of the Washingtonians I spoke with at the New Talent Exhibition showed a far greater artistic resiliency...
...But is it a composition...
...Ralph stared at Fourfold Orange Volume and nodded...
...he asked...
...I said yes, and, changing the subject, asked where Lucy was from...
...She ignored the little joke...
...These are relatively cheap, disposable objects only because wages are low and no one thought to charge for the water and air poisoned in their careless manufacture...
...You are interested...
...At the gallery, Tom introduced me to a man he called "Ralph from Baltimore...
...He walked over and picked up Orange Fourfold Volume and placed it in front of East Wing...
...Her husband looked at the program...
...Figure I, $1,200] Fortified with this information I confronted Lucy's Argonaut (oil-andmixed-media-on-canvas), and began translating it into my own medium, or metier (Faber-Castell-unib all-pen-onreporter's-notebook) [Figure I, $1,200...
...If you pursue your own strategies wherever they take you, you do indeed end up with a composition...
...Rendering the spiritual telephone cords and rolled tin—Lucy's mixed media—presented certain problems of interpretation, and I was slightly self-conscious when one of the gallery workers walked up and peered over my shoulder...
...I found her [he meant her paintings] hanging in a gallery in Santa Fe," he said...
...It does: Figure III, $1,600.] Hotline is a large wooden plank, to which Rex has affixed a bed of nails, a cluster of plastic grapes, several miniature globes, a T-square, and an alarm bell (batteries included)—the whole shebang slathered with black paint...
...But I do know that this thing is not pleasing to the eye...
...There is a mysterious assertiveness in her work—perfect for Washington, I think...
...You get so sick of this crap," she said...
...That's how it becomes something like the object," Ralph said...
...She tugged on the shoulder strap of her purse and turned away...
...He stepped back and waited...
...So you just permit the future to happen, and then you do indeed come face to face with a composition—is that what you mean...
...They aren't going to go away...
...It is an object...
...A kind of spatial exploration...
...Watch," said Tom...
...I'm interested in compositional strategies," Tom told them...
...Of his Hotline Sentinel he wrote, "The work, I hope, does not invite translation...
...I have seen things more pleasing to the eye in the junk pile outside a machine shop...
...Raw and tense," the Post called them in a preview, but the woman I spoke with at the gallery preferred to speak of them as "unschooled...
...There," he said...
...In the Anton Gallery the works of Rex Weil were on display, in a show called "Brutal Elegance...
...Whatever his lack of education, Rex has highly developed word processing skills, for his "Artist's Statement" ran to well over 600 words...
...The centerpiece of this metaphor—to mix metaphors—is an eight-foot painted photo of the East Wing of the National Gallery which Torn has sliced up and glued to a five-panel folding screen...
...His medium is "painted photos," which involves—in reductive terms—taking a photograph and smearing it with paint...
...It's easy to get confused," he said...
...To the contrary, they are physical pieces which force the viewer to confront sometimes conflicting attractions and spiritual allusions...
...Between here'l----Ralph touched the edge of Orange Fourfold Volumend here"—he pointed to East Wing...
...It's an unwanted question that I find endlessly puzzling...
...Here," Rex explained, "the spirituality derives in part from a recognition of scarcity and the latent resource and labor value retained in the art materials and in the discarded, manufactured goods...
...You don't think it's whimsical...
...Ralph and his girlfriend stared long at East Wing ($4500...
...With modern art, this is probably wise, perhaps even necessary...
...Wait," said Torn, rapping his knuckles on East Wing...
...A written explanation keeps potential patrons from fumbling around in a private darkness of aesthetic confusion, which might inhibit the search for meaning and checkbooks...
...It is not pleasing to the eye," said the woman, summarily...
...And to tell you the truth, they kind of confuse me sometimes...
...At the Wallace Wentworth Gallery, on R Street, I stood alongside a middle-aged couple experiencing Cynthia Barber's sculpture, Euclidean Whimsy—an "abstract [Figure II, $7,000] exploration of pure form and color dancing in space," the program described it, " . . . created partially from reconstituted farm machinery" [Figure II, $7,000...
...I don't know whimsical," she said...
...Adding colors and forms to a black and white photograph," he told me, "is a metaphor of our human situation...
...Yes," said his girlfriend...
...Right," said Tom...
...A whole new relationship has been established," said Ralph...
...he asked...
...THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR NEW TALENT Last month, while gallery-hopping through the Dupont Circle New Talent Exhibition, I noticed that most dealers distributed a paragraph or two about the works on display...
...Figure III, $1,600J "I think Rex will find his audience among private collectors," she said...
...I know that," Ralph said quickly...
...I mean, does the composition exist...
...As complements, Tom also had on hand several "virtual screens," empty screen frames hinged together and given names: Orange Fourfold Volume (acrylic-on-poplar, $900), A(tomorrow)B(today) ($675), and so on...
...Well," I told the gallery lady, "I guess that means GM won't be buying this one for its corporate headquarters...
...At the Baumgartner Gallery, for example, one such statement explained that the featured artist Lucy Maki "creates spiritual paintings, but not in the sense that the work approaches antimaterialism...
...Yes," said his girlfriend...
...Maybe, maybe not...
...So you see," said Tom, shrugging, "here's an environment...
Vol. 20 • August 1987 • No. 8
