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blue x clear + 2:1
May 23, 2002
Debs &Co. 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea
In an increasingly relativistic world, it only makes sense that more and more artists are using or referring to reflective surfaces that warp and bend images. James Rosenquist recently painted forms as they appeared on mirrored cones; Steve Mumford made a series of landscape paintings reflected off the body of a car. Now, Carrie Yamaoka has made small works, in a series called "Kool-Pop," that consist of rippling Mylar sheets in various colors mounted onto panels with resin. Since these pieces are diminutive and seemingly half-baked, the fun-house whirl that one might anticipate when looking into Yamaoka's panels never materializes. In some instances, a viewer's belly might dance or, say, morph into a giraffe; and the variations in color create different moods. But Yamaoka, it seems, has bigger fish to fry than simply entertaining one's inner child. Rather than create a spectacle, her low-tech materials appear to deflect or defer the idea of visual representation. She seems to be asking, Why bother to depict anything at all? It's a cool-handed approach that recalls machine-artist Andy Warhol's Mylar balloons. Yet Yamaoka's sangfroid runs even deeper and is almost ice-cold in its psychology; the "Kool" in the series title has associations with Kool-Aid, summoning to mind a cheap sugar rush or bright colors or drugs. On the other hand, many of the panels seem situated in the gallery to extend the space visually. Such positioning imparts a certain Donald JuddÂlike obdurateness to them. In fact, one piece titled Corner is blunt enough to suggest that Yamaoka is more interested in elaborating upon the concrete world than in opening a window to another realm. One can't help wondering whether the works are Pop or Minimalist, site-specific or toss-away. This uncertainty is the pleasant twist in Yamaoka's strange little reflections on reality. by Robert Mahoney
published in Time Out New York, Issue 347. |
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