UNPOP - September at Tribes
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 10, 2010
UNPOP curated by Janet Bruesselbach
September 4 – 30, 2010
Opening Reception with refreshments Saturday, September 4, 8 pm
A Gathering of the Tribes Gallery
285 E 3rd St. #2 New York, NY 10009 (F to 2nd Ave, 5 blocks east, between Ave C & D)
![]() |
Jenny Bhatt has sent paintings from India that fuse cartoon Western popism with the well-established philosophical conversation of Hindu Buddhist mythology, featuring a cast of conceptual deities in consumerist narratives. She makes interactive work and comic strips at her site Washington Chavez went to every gallery in New York City asking them to look at his paintings, and filmed all of it. The result is a queasy litany of rejection, the dying profession of door-to-door salesman multiplied by the eternal buyer’s market of art, emotional sadomasochism intensified by raw documentary recording. Rita Alves’s anamorphic installation paintings are more engaged with the national politics of U.S. human rights violations than directly with consumer politics. The use of funhouse optics to undistort image evidence of atrocities questions the tension artists feel between the obligations to be both sensitizing activists and entertainers. It makes the whole commodity issue look selfish. Lauren Hoffen paints commercial parodies that literalize ironic double-speak through blacklight-sensitive paint. James Mercer assembles ephemeral cardboard and paint installations (as well as digital and ink drawings) resembling video game levels. They are idiosyncratic, generative rewarders of attention from Millenial observers trained by extremely creative-labor-intensive products.
Inquire Janet@Bruesselbach.com and view online catalog at http://www.tribes.org/web/