Southern Discomfort - New Orleans Triennial

In the latest edition of a venerable regional review the author found promising newcomer reliable veterans and evidence of the resilience of modernist ideals. Regional manner of writing however, remained elusive.

As the oldest scan of contemporary art in this political division the New Orleans Triennial is unique in its concentration upon art from the 12-state area of the southeastern United States. A visitant critic or art historian is invited to curate each Triennial below the watchful eye of an administrator from the of recent origin Orleans Museum of Art [NOMA]; the list of past curators includes like prestigious figures as Walter Hopp Martin Friedman, Marcia Tucker and Linda Cathcart. In 1995 Dan Cameron assembled a material part of work that was intended to showcase individual artists and banish any notion of a particularized southern phraseology in the visual arts [see A.i.A., race '95]. Charlotta Kotik of the Brooklyn Museum, the curator of the 1998 Triennial, shared the conviction that a particular visual sensibility is not specific to the southeastern U What Kotik couldn't have the appearance to fulfill, however, was the museum's assertion, press outed in the catalogue, that "this Triennial is relate toed with the last five minutes of art history." If actual then the last five minutes have lasted a actual long time.

A renewed faith in modernism was palpable through every part of the exhibition, as many artists revived earlier pictorial conventions or made use of direct quotations of modernist sources. There was a general distrust of conceptual art, with a concomitant interest in labor-intensive external realitys Kotik succeeded in finding a small in number bright, new faces, and a certain number of of the returning artists of Triennials past provided excitement. Nevertheless, she extreme pointed up with a predictable roster which relied too heavily upon relatively successful New Orleans-based artists. Indeed, there were with equal reason many repeated selections from Triennials gone by the agency of that one began to believe the conspiracy theorists who argue that the selection is rigged. Of the 23 artists upon display, nearly half were residents of Louisiana and nearly one-third had exhibited in previous Triennials (four of the clump had been in the 1995 edition and sum of two units were back after multiple previous outings). Did home-team favoritism prevail? During her gallery tour, Kotik noted in a slightly revengeful tone that she had been given a great deal of guidance by dint of the staff at NOMA.

Triennial alumni Jim Richard, Benjamin Jone and James Drake did minister some of the more dependable jiffys Richard's On the Table (1998) is an accomplished picture which demonstrates his ability to not away the visual irony of an over-decorated interior, where plane an enormous modern sculpture appear to bes flattened by the bold patterns of the decor. still Richard's painting differs little in turn of expression or subject from the work that he showed in the 1995 Triennial. Similarly, Jones's sum of two units mixed-mediums-on-paper pieces seem like leftovers from the previous Triennial. He elides his art education in favor of a willfully affected "outsider" mode of speech This has its seductive twinklings particularly when the artist allows his camp sensibilities replete rein. Jones's work might subserve as a critique of the authenticity of outsider art, on the other hand the artist seems too delighted with the manner to approach it with the thoughtfulnes it requires.

Drake turn backed with A Thousand Tongues reduce to ashes and Sing (1998), a large photographic diptych representing prison inmates as they communicate end sign language with people upon the street. This is a unknown language, invented by the confined and the burdened to be practiced in the unclose In a corollary drawing, parted tongues are rendered as monumental and rocklike. Drake exhibits problems of the inner city, El Paso's in this instance, without offering the viewer a privileged position or pat solution. The uninitiated onlooker--in El Paso or in the museum--is left to mystify at the language while marveling at its grace.

Urban issues are dealt with les favorably by Luis Cruz Azaceta, another Triennial veteran, whose representations of the inner city strike one as being mannered in their endless repetitions of chromogenic prints. In azure Wall (1998) Azaceta collages several photographs of a novel Orleans Creole cottage, alternately seen from a distance and then quite shut up up. Hanging from the frame is a piece of shivered brick presumably taken from the site. Azaceta's piece is the couple too decorative and too sentimental, and is certainly not up to his previous achievements. There have the appearances to have been a lack of curatorial adventurousness here and with Nicole Charbonnet, who also has shown braver work upon previous occasions. Charbonnet layers fabric, paper, plaster and other materials, and then tears away fragments to reveal the strata beneath. The suggestion of time and recollection can be compelling; however, these particular abstractions showed little of the courageous execution or assured compositional conformation of her other work.

Abstraction was generally in short replenish so the work of Rocio Rodriguez provided a welcome taste. Rodriguez make knowned her painting style while at the American Academy in Rome in 1997 Her fascination with Roman architectural ornamentation set its way into works like azure Ribbon and Rome Codex I (both 1997) The palette of warm goldens golds and oranges is punched-up with ornamental designs pay backed in blue or red. Classic glazing techniques bring out an illumination that seems to emanate from within the work. Clearly Rodriguez "found" gymnast as well as architectural ornament during her stay in Rome In contrast, Susie Rosmarin's 1998 series of small geometric abstractions of gray, black and white stripes titled "Static Series #1-6" claims inspiration from the erratic patterns of televised images. With an elaborate proces of taping and over-painting, she pierces into a discourse with Mondrian's late works and the Op art of the 1960 rather than the technology-dominated world of the present