No Name

June 20 - July 25 2013

Curated by Aaron Krach and Courtney Childress

On Stellar Rays

133 Orchard Street, NY, NY 10002

Summer group shows have a venerable history all the way from the Royal Academy in London, which since 1768 has been the highlight of the season before the quality leave to get away from the stench of the city in summer, all the way through to your local gallery be it Gagosian or that storefront on the corner that used to sell shoes. On Stellar Rays on Orchard Street is that place that used to sell shoes on NY’s Lower East Side, launching ground for many million immigrant stories. It’s place in a place of transition speaks powerfully of the nature of art in everyday life and it’s potency to effect how society both sees itself and the divisions determined by society as a group that often plague and perplex the artistically inclined.

On Stellar Rays’ show, curated by artists Aaron Krach and Courtney Childress takes for its theme a meme from the topsy-turvy mind of Judith/jack Halberstam, author of ‘The Queer Art of Failure’ Durham: Duke University Press, 2011, who writes of the potency of failure, counter-intuition and stupidity. As a theorist who mines the culture in search of truth, both personal and societal, she/he occupies a rich, narrow band inhabited by drag kings, ‘Dude, where’s my car?’, ‘SpongeBob Squarepants’ and other counter-hegemonic contradictions. ‘Dick’ being a pivotal problem spot with reference to her ‘bathroom problem’ in her/his book ‘Female Masculinity’ (1998, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.)

As a premise on which to hang a show, Judith/Jack Halberstam upends the notions of a linear society, bound in a love/hate relationship with propriety and control. She/he argues that the distinctions of our society are brutal and crushing, ignoring the subtleties of gender, intellect and order which not surprisingly brings a freedom that mirrors the idiocy of gender, intellect and order. ‘No Name’ is the group show version of that context where otherness or refusal to conform is the calling card. But is it? The very structure that is a group show, which in turn mimics the historical precedent of places like The Royal Academy, which in turn represents the highest levels of societal control and cultural imperialism, calls into question the street credibility of gathering work into one room and contemplating it as a group. The contradictions of rebellion and ‘otherness’ loom large here and are not easily resolved.

At a certain point the grouping begs the benefit of a forensic investigation along the lines of ‘Which of these things is not like the others’? For simplicity of thought and action, Susan Collis’ Long Fallen Wide, 2013′, a green piece of wood leaning against the wall, Zachary Drucker’s ‘WELCOME, 2013′ not surprisingly a welcome mat or Vanessa Billy’s ‘Preserved Stone, 2013′, a rock wrapped in vaseline and cling film all veer off into ‘other’ places. But their manufacture is of a familiarity that dampens our connection with their uncategorizable nature. Jennifer Sirey’s window installation ‘Mother, 2013′ is a science experiment and collection of ‘culture’ celebrating, I assume, the ‘mother’ from which the vinegar comes. Shamus Clisset’s ‘SWASS (Long Charm) 2012′, an exploration of hip hop gold lust as a two-dimensional work occupies the most traditional context and seems literally flat as a result. Familiar images and forms are so hard wired into our culture that we process them unconsciously; Nico Colon’s ‘Untitled, 2013′ offers a microcosm along the lines of a crowded Tokyo apartment, Nathaniel Robinson’s ‘Heap, 2013′, can be both garbage and objects raised to new heights by being such and Sterling Allen’s ‘Untitled, 2013′, something Aunt Hattie sweetly left on her sewing room wall. These works all push and pull us between the familiar and the dissimilar. Bayard’s 2008 ‘President Balances National Budgie’ is a mohair construction of deep tactility. It’s quiet presence asks whether it was placed here or did it simply grow? It stands alone and apart demonstrating the idea that the more something is about, the less it has to say for itself. But it too looks uncomfortable being part of a category or a not-category.

Then there are the two performative pieces, Michael Mahalchick’s Jasper Johns riff, ‘Flag’, with Savarin can and bacon fat instead of beeswax which was created during the opening and Jonathan Van Dyke’s ‘Self Portrait as My Mother, as an Actress, as a Painter, as a Stranger, 2013′, a patchwork piece which came with a live actress, dressed and acting like an over made-up drunken drab at an 80′s beer blast, with blue paint running down her leg and consequently getting on the floor and walls.

So we have to look at the layers at work here. The context of the room, the nature of three dimensional space, the expectation of the viewer, the familiarity of art if we often look at art, the space/time/weather/light, number of people in the room, number of people passing in the street, noise, anxiety levels, heart rate… the beat goes on.

The very act of labelling something as ‘not’, not a part (not relevant, not powerful) renders it a part of a new group. Judith/Jack Halberstam seems to imply this with her/his idea that if understanding is ignoring a subsection of society or culture, then we must create a new set and add that grouping to the larger sets and subsets. So perhaps there are a multiplicity of sets and subsets at work here. Bayard’s elegant mohair piece and Sterling Allen’s left-over ribbons being the pure, textile set. The more you look at a thing, the more it reveals, yes, but it also reveals how limited we are in our understanding of all the elements that make up our world and culture.

As Judith/Jack prefers to frame it, she/he utilises a ‘silly archive’ where social theory includes Spongebob Squarepants as well as high theorists Gransci and Althusser. In her world, it’s not simply what you are looking at, it’s HOW.