Fwd: Raw review @ Visual Art Source
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> Colby Claycomb, White Picket Fence, linoleum, plastic edging, at Root Division. RAW features mixed-media works that assert their materiality and overt identity as artifacts "made in an honest manner," according to curator/artist John K. Melvin. One of the ten artists, Barry Beach, writes of "constructing nature. . .from organic and synthetic forms, mixing and experimenting salvaged and new materials. . .not knowing exactly what will emerge," inspired by the hybrid areas "between city and country, urban and rural, nature and culture." Memorable works embodying this post-conceptual/DIY aesthetic stance (some of which incorporate the gallery's architectural elements) include: Colby Claycomb's "White Picket Fence," a wall relief composed of black linoleum shards arranged concentrically, like a fingerprint, from whose center erupts a floral spiral of coiled plastic faux-fence edging; Ruth Hodgins' "Sword in the Stone," a surrealist bat-and-ball sports (and testosterone?) parody; Brandon Truscotts's "Made by Memory," a recumbent baby doll wrapped by and suspended from strands of glossy brown audiotape; and Jesse Walton's "John Deere and the Last Frontier," a "construction detritus" installation symbolizing the industrial domestication of the wilderness. RAW anticipates, with humor and imagination, a coming era of higher-priced energy and "lowered expectations" (California's Zen governor Jerry Brown is back, after all); of creative re-purposing and applied bricolage (at Root Division, San Francisco, California).
> - Dewitt Cheng
Thanks for the memories.
