Bad markets can do good things for art, as the spectacle-industrial complex of fairs and festivals gives up ground to the grit of experiment. Consider the rough-and-tumble “Looking Back,” at White Columns, as a preview of coming attractions. For its third annual, the gallery invited Jay Sanders, a visionary young curator with an eye for the offbeat and a knack for reviving the unsung, to round up the best things he’s seen this year. The list of thirty or so artists has its predictable share of hip up-and-comers (like K8 Hardy, whose coven of mannequin heads owe a thank-you note to Rachel Harrison) and avant-garde nabobs (like Paul McCarthy, whose ferocious sound piece is tucked into a pillow-strewn room, though only the bravest will linger). But Sanders casts his net wide, in the cross-pollinated spirit of Constructivism or the heyday of Judson Church. That pair of low-slung pianos in the middle of the room? They’re reincarnations from Richard Foreman’s fever dream of a play, “Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland.” ♦
Critic’s Notebook
Change Up
by Andrea K. Scott December 15, 2008
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ILLUSTRATION: SILJA GÖTZ
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