Reconstructing the Mundane at Unit B (Gallery)San Antonio

Review by Catherine Walworth


Destina Olivares

I never saw Unit B in Chicago, but rest safe that it has a sweet new home in San Antonio and, as it opens its second show in its new digs, it has a faithful following. Taking over an extra apartment attached to a one-story house, the white-walled, two room gallery with kitchenette is homey. This is truly a set up that encourages living with art, sans furniture.

I'm reading a Joseph Heller novel right now—Something Happened (1971)—and it's all about a guy who obsesses over his wife, kids, boss, and girlfriends. His past, present, and future is bound up in one neurotic, dissatisfied stream of consciousness. With this book on my mind, I made my way up the flower-lined path to the domestic environment of Unit B.

Destina Olivares

Reconstructing the Mundane, curated by Kimberly Aubuchon and John Mata, inhabits its domestic gallery space well. Destina Olivares (Austin, TX) populated the kitchenette with a family resembling life-size paper dolls. A man's suit, woman's green 1960s dress with red-fringed apron, and a little girl's yellow sundress float on filament from the ceiling--she at her sink, he near an exposed pipe. Their two-sided outfits have been sewn out of a raw canvas-like material and threads are left hanging at the edges. A white wall phone and an old toaster have been constructed likewise, with new cloth cozies covered in heat-transferred photos of their real selves. The phone reads, “helpful” and the toaster, “useful.” The stitched job titles turn family relationships into blue collar uniforms.
We are all in our little roles together baking a pie.

installation view of works by Brian Dettmer

In the living room, books line the walls—not spine-out on a bookshelf—but carved out and hung back cover against the wall. Brian Dettmer (Chicago) uses old, illustrated books with scientific, cultural, and anthropological illustrations which he then obsessively carves out in successive layers until they come together in a 3-dimensional tableau. They want to be fun, but are mostly serious, because they dissect and flay antiquated subject matter. Dettmer’s comic books treated the same way are lighter, more colorful. The only object in the center of the room is Scoop (2003), a set of encyclopedias glued together and dug out from the top like a canoe. I like the idea of just dipping into information like ice cream, but I wish he hadn’t painted the outside over and repainted gold stripes on the spine. It makes them look too wooden when the dimpled dinosaur encyclopedia looks so beautiful today.

Brian Dettmer

No home is complete without television. And Reconstructing the Mundane has its own flat screen to showcase the gorgeous Jezt Im Kino (Now in [the] Cinema) (2003) by Matthew Noel-Tod (London), While Dettmer shows us a surgical cutting away of books, Noel-Tod creates the dreamlike feeling of reading and imagining at the same time. The footage was taken while whizzing through Berlin—the music is Mozart’s 20th Concerto in D Minor—and the text that appears and disappears like subtitles comes from a mélange of books and movies. The artist’s cosmopolitan resume is filled with European education and exhibitions, and the text he pulls from literature and film reads like a Milan Kundera novel or a Truffaut script—where philosophy is an everyday condition of human experience. Being a sucker for that kind of stuff myself, I cheerfully gurgled over lines that sped by like:

MARIA DRIVES, HERMANN SITS NEXT TO HER
THEY ARE JUST LEAVING THE SUBURBS
AND COMING TO OPEN COUNTRY
HERMANN:
PLEASE DON'T FORGET THAT I'M GIVING YOU EVERYTHING
ALL THE MONEY IT DOESN'T INTEREST ME ANYMORE
MARIA:
I HAVE GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING
MY WHOLE LIFE
THEY ARE NOW ON AN OPEN HIGHWAY
MARIA SPEEDS UP
THERE IS A SHARP CURVE IN THE HIGHWAY UP AHEAD
HERMANN (LOVINGLY):
WHERE ARE YOU DRIVING US?
MARIA:
TO THE COUNTRY

FOR LOVE
AND REVOLUTION

The last lines peel away and float back down in place like a band-aid stripped off reapplied.

Matthew Noel-Tod

Noel-Tod is deep in thought about representation and creation, what is real and unreal. His appropriated text and music combined with elegant filmmaking technique, takes other artist’s work and splices it into something fulfilling to multiple senses. The only thing missing is a pie baking in Unit B’s oven to waft in and make us at home.

Catherine Walworth is an artist and critic,Transplanted from the Midwest, based in Texas and likes dogs.

Reconstructing the Mundane is on view through May 5, 2006 at Unit B (Gallery)
500 Stieren Street at Cedar • San Antonio

Live Blogging the Art Fairs

What is the point of "live blogging?" Are there art fans at home constantly surfing the blogs hoping for updates on the big art fairs this weekend in NYC? It might be cool to give live updates about peices being sold, and when different works are getting pulled out of hiding. No it wouldn't that would be disgusting, who cares?



Here's a good example of a useless tidbit: At a prominent London gallerie's booth our correspondant casually looked at a Johnathan Lasker and eve's dropped on the gallerist telling someone about an incident the day before. Some American was peeking in the booth's closet at a Warhol self portrait. A smallish sideby side late one. Apperantly the gallery having it could be a bit of a scandal and it shouldn't be brought out into the open. The gallery had a tiny Mao, which the gallerist passed off as being a "knick knack." BUt this other one, which the two plus AorI? was peeking at, was something else. Maybe it has to with the Warhol Authentication board. Or other galleries at the show who have a claim to showing Warhols more than the one in question. Who knows. Who cares. There is your juicy live gossip.

Art or Idiocy? was at the Armory and ~Scope. We are working on a comprehensive report. And that just can't be rushed. But we can tell you this much:

The hierarchy of the art fairs is
1. Armory Show
2.~Scope
3. Pulse
4. LA something or other (Stilted LA dealers in a hotel)
5. Diva (it sucks just from the name, also officially connected in some way to Armory, the others are parasites)

Other: Whitney Biennial, (tied for #1)

First impressions are that Scope was better than Armory. If for no other reason than the atmosphere. At Scope you didn't feel like a poor and worthless failure while being crushed by other fair goers. Also, we liked more art at Scope, more art was caught our attention. And it was favorable. Not catching our attention for sucking.

The big news to report is that Natalie Portman was spotted at Armory. She really is short, like people say. She is about four feet tall. Ms. Portman gave that nervous half smile people give eachother in a crowded train. When you are afraid you are in someone's way and don't want to come off as a jerk. She was with out entourage, and that earns point. Portman's hair is well on it's way to growing back after shaving to be in V for Vendetta. But the actress' recovery from Star Wars is anyone's guess.

At Scope the freakish Eva and Adele were out and about. Eva and Adele are the German version of Gilbert and George but not as famous. And they claim to be hermaphrodites from the future on a mission of art.

Reporting from Times Square

Drawings of Sculptures by Lee Bontecou

Giola Gallery, at 118 N Peoria, currently has a show of drawings of Lee Bontecou sculptures on plaster by Judith Mullen. There are also sculptures of sculptures by Cy Twombly. Giola Gallery is an LLC, and you know what that means.

Limited Liability gallery's website