Monday, October 23, 2017

Brevity or Bust (Under 250 words for "Legacy", Josh Callaghan @ Night Gallery)






Josh Callaghan is showing again at Night Gallery with minimal totems that elicit Brancusi crossed with Gordon Matta-Clark. He is known for mastering the art of that's-good-enough-trompe l'oeil in which something that appears to be three dimensional is, upon closer inspection, actually made of the cheapest shit he could find.

He has cast his magnificent spell this time upon refrigerators with tags and wiring somewhat intact, as well as two three quirky oversize pine-cones made out of wire and concrete. I'd love to see his take on the poor man's Larry Bell Glass cube.

You could describe him as "some scrappy white dude that makes clever works that are perfectly at home in art fairs or in solo exhibitions riffing off of a history of art", but then you'd mistake his demented artwork for something that has the possibility of being tacky. The humor is as dry as it gets.

Also it takes a lot of heart to see and magnify the natural imperfections of that stuff out there that we call nature. As far as commodities go, the topic isn't 'art', it's refrigerators that are a signifier of consumption. If you own two, you probably have a big house and are more wasteful than you'd ever admit. If you only have one in your house, then Fox News still thinks that's one appliance too many to be eligible for food stamps. These works are up until Nov 18th.




1 comment:

Cedric Tai said...

The response from the art magazine I sent it to:

"Hi Cedric,
Thanks so much for submitting—this review is nice and saucy, just how we like it. Unfortunately, we’ve reviewed Night Gallery pretty recently, so we’ll have to pass on this. Please do keep us in mind for future submissions though, and thanks again for reaching out.
Best,

..."