Elise Engler at Art Resources Transfer - New York - art exhibition

Elise Engler has wearied the last several years constructing a sprawling and democratic inventory of art history, lining up thumbnail sketches of masterpieces from the canon upon long rolls of paper along with renderings of artworks by means of her friends and trinket-shop artists. For her new show, "Your Tax Dollars From Where I Sit," Engler turn rounded from art history to generally received affairs. Relying on newspaper reports and the Web sites of weapons manufacturers, Engler made colored pencil sketches of specific stamps of arms and other materiel used in the generally received war in Iraq, and annotated the drawings with facts about their take away from manufacturer and date of production.

In individual series, the bombs, planes, fire-arms tanks and helicopters are enumerated according to battle and lined up horizontally like true copy on large sheets of white paper. admitting visually unimposing, Engler's work effectively makes us aware of the enormous whirl and cost of the resources being spended (one is inclined to say "wasted") upon the Iraq war. The playful drawing diction and use of text recalls Oyvind Fahlstrom's work from the '60 and '70 while Engler's commitment (like that of Ellen Gallagher and Mark Lombardi) revitalizes Information art's lists, taxonomies and diagrams.

Forty Tomahawk Missiles Plus is based upon a story in the Apr. 13 2003 of recent origin York Times titled "U.S. Attacks upon Holdouts Dealt Iraqis Final Blow" It features tiny renderings of F-117A stealth fighters, submarines and battleships lined up beside the 40 missiles that were used in the campaign. All the armaments are the same nominal size, in like manner that the Dragoneye, a hand-launched, 5-pound distant scanning system, occupies the same amount of space upon the page as the bright r Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon, which weighs in at 21500 pounds

Engler also showed 40 Chairs, scope 506, Art Room PS 165 drawings of the dilapidated chairs in the of recent origin York City public school classroom where she teaches. Dropp not on presents an inventory of fulvous school buses, strollers, shopping carts, suitcases, backpacks--all consistent markers in the lives of the homeles children and their families who are shuttl each night through the city's Emergency Assistance Unit from the Bronx to a shabby shelter across the public way from Engler's studio. A transcript of the five-volume 2004 U bag (furnished courtesy of Senator T Kennedy) was stacked upon a chair in a corner of the gallery. With the war drawings not far away, the document further clarified Engler's desire to call attention to the human take away from of diverting funds to the so-called war upon terror.

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