Curated by Jenny Hager, Jennifer Celio, and Valerie Wilcox, Specter of Documentation – closing November 3rd at Durden and Ray – is the perfect show for today’s news cycle, and tomorrow’s memories.
Edgy and fascinating, the show features artists Sydney Croskery, Dani Dodge, Marielle Farnan, Ed Gomez, Claudia Parducci, Sabine Pearlman, Liza Ryan, Curtis Stage, Joe Wolek, Steven Wolkoff, and Tim Youd.
In a wide range of mediums, the artists take on the idea of documentation, of gathering and recording, of saving and analyzing. In combination with this, the show deals with an unnamed phantom, a specter that haunts, or perhaps shifts a ghostly light onto the inner soul behind the prosaic.
From the serene oil on panel visual postcards of nature by Croskery to her oil work of a jujjjyfruits box to the haunting devastation of Parducci’s charcoal on canvas “OK City,” there is much to dive into here.
Surface viewing barely scratches the meaning of each image, which seem to be inhabited by an almost unearthly, biting, deeply felt knowledge the artists each seek to impart.
There is the intricate shredded acrylic paint strip mosaic sculpture of Wolkoff’s “50 Girls I didn’t call” paired viscerally and sardonically with his “65 women who Charles Manson didn’t kill,” the perfect distillation of the recent Supreme Court nominee debacle.
Woleck’s video sculpture “In the Foothills of Appalachia (Lipstick on a Pig)” offers a mysterious glimpse of a life we haven’t led, yet one that feels oddly prescient and familiar.
Farnan’s photographic works shot in Forest Lawn cemetery edge on the surreal.
Dodge’s striking installation “Khartoum” intricately sews stories clipped from the Los Angeles Times to velvet and polyfil, crafting a stunning horse’s head that evokes the iconic horse’s head depicted in The Godfather. Red thread binds the head, neck, and crumpled blanket to the ceiling as if with sinews torn from flesh or ribbons of blood. The horse’s eye has a pupil that reveals the orange-faced image of Donald Trump, the ultimate thug.
Gomez’ mixed media sculpture “20th Century” reminds the viewer of Calder, a kite, a frozen field of kinetic energy all in one; modern, fragile, spooky.
Curators and artists, above
You want to see this show for so many reasons: it’s this day, this age, this year, this time; it will stay with you like a fragment of a mirror embedded in your skin and heart. And it’s a beautiful, strange, mysterious show: you learn from it without needing to understand; it reveals and compels with a silent power.
Addendum: When in Rome…Durden and Ray just opened Los Angeles Is, Once Again at the Gallery of Art, Temple University Rome. That exhibition is curated by Camilla Boemio and features Durden and Ray artists Dani Dodge, Ed Gomez, Sean Noyce, Max Presneill, Ty Pownall, Curtis Stage, Alison Woods, Gul Cagin, Roni Feldman, and Joe Davidson. If you’re aheaded abroad, that exhibition runs through November 22nd. The opening event included performance art by Sean Noyce and Katya Usvitsky.
Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis (Rome photo provided by Durden and Ray)