| |
Joseph Phillips,
'Elevated VIP Lawn,' 2010, gouache, ink and pencil on paper, 13
x 17 inches |
This
two person exhibit of work by Joseph Phillips and Shawn Smith
use traditional drafting and sculpting methods to cast a sharp,
expert light on the increasing commodification and digitizing
of the natural world. Phillips, a master of gouache painting,
offers full-color schema depicting combinations of geology and
architecture as they might appear in some divine IKEA catalog
of utopian real estate: cottages swaddled in vertically arranged
beachfront property, subterranean reservoirs of energy topped
by tidy storage buildings, discrete units of improbable curbside
appeal enhanced by non-indigenous foliage and packaged for some
fantasy marketplace. Would you care for a side of julienned tectonic
plates with your order, sir?
On the other side of the gallery, Shawn Smith eschews the merely
two-dimensional and provides sculptures of wildlife: various birds,
the heads of antelopes, a fox. All of these creatures are built
from hundreds of hand-cut lengths of wood and rendered as collections
of solid pixels, as if the inhabitants of some 8-bit computer
game called "Woodland Creatures" had manifested themselves
beyond the screen. The effect is consistently gorgeous and jarring
and, especially in the case of one piece depicting a vulture perched
triumphantly upon the shattered remains of an antique typewriter,
more than a little unsettling.
back
to previous page |
|
|
