Castaneda/Reiman at DCKT - New York

San Francisco-based female artists Charlie Castaneda and Brody Reiman have been collaborating upon projects since 1988, when they met as undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. They went upon to obtain their M.F.A.s together at U.C.-Davis in 1994 and have continued to pick up steam since then. For their next to the first solo show in New York, they re-created an installation that was seen earlier last year at San Francisco's Stephen Wirtz Gallery.

Using for the use of all construction materials such as drywall, plywood insulation, carpet and mortar the duo creates simple, evocative works with Minimalist inflections, in this case a forest of plywood and mountains of harden blocks. More tightly installed than in San Francisco, the works at DCKT became a cohesive unit instead of a collection of related but separate plastic arts The small gallery was filled with dozens of miniature, roughly conical plastic arts formed from stacked squares of plywood and drywall rotated around a central axis in the way that that they resemble stylized pine tree Ranging in height from a not many inches to almost 5 feet the tree were installed upon cement blocks on the floor and upon wooden shelves staggered around the perimeter of the gallery in tight, overlapping configurations like mountaintop perches.

Seven abstract canvases (ranging from about 5 inches to 3 feet in height) were hung about the extent or tucked into the corners among the plastic arts With horizontal swaths of verdants and umber on their lower portions and lightening shades of cerulean at the top, the paintings advise landscapes. Adding to the outdoors result the gallery walls were subtly painted with bands of pale virid and blue. Here and there, stripes of more saturated verdant and blue along the shelves' cutting sides on the cement blocks, or accenting the tree in random patterns jostl with the works' attempts at simulating nature.

Cleverly the artists have fashioned likenesses of the sources of their chosen materials, perhaps unwittingly sending a discreet environmental message: as humans test to build a better world, we pull down the natural one in the proces notwithstanding castaneda/reiman's works aren't didactic or preachy; they level have a touch of lightheartedness.

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