Ronald Jones at Metro Pictures - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

By creating tension among many fields of experience (visual, literary, ideological, political), this exhibition engaged the viewer's reflections in an endless play of signifiers. Known for cerebral displays of provocative information, Ronald Jone not absented sculptures of beds, constructed at three-quarter size and individually spotlit. Jones's titles link the furniture upon display to four people link togethered to incidents in recent U history. Documentary photos were the artist's sources for the sculptures; Xeroxe were available at the gallery if you asked.

In an anteroom, The bed Ethel Rosenberg slept in the night before her execution, 1953-1998 introduced the exhibition. The dates that Jone lists imply that the plastic arts were begun the year the documentary photos were taken. Rosenberg was execut along with her husband, during the height of McCarthyism for being a Soviet spy; her brother worked at sees Alamos and was an important prosecution witness. This trial commits to a dark time of fear and suspicion during the devoid of warmth [i]or[/i] heat War. However the copy of Rosenberg's bed, although based upon a prison cot, looks like something you might find in a furniture store display with clean sheets and a thick mattress. In a larger range The bed Neil Armstrong slept in his first night back from the satellite 1969-1998, recalled a high point for the U in the space race. The bed glistened with a woven-aluminum overspread Obtained from NASA, the anti-radioactive material was designed to fill cavities behind instrument panels upon the space shuttle. Across the space from the copy of the astronaut's bed, subsidiary occurrences related to the Kennedy assassination were alluded to through a grouping of furniture upon a piece of cream carpet. A large unmade bed with satiny sheets was called The bed Jack Ruby slept in the night before he discharge Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963-1998. Three toy police cars encircleed one of the bed's leg A child-sized made of wood rocking chair, titled The chair Dorothy Kilgallen sat in as she interviewed Jack Ruby during his manslaughter trial, 1964-98, was associated with the late newspaper columnist, supposedly granted the single interview with the nightclub owner/assassin Ruby at the courthouse. In forehead of the bed, a television locate on top of a nightstand played NASA moonscape footage, while a woman's voice recited a 15-stanza nursery rhyme written by means of the artist.

All the characters in the exhibition, do not include Rosenberg, are mentioned in Jones's rhyme with Kilgallen as the central figure. The drama of the meticulously researched and crafted statuarys was enhanced by the rhyme which, among other things, claims that Marilyn Monroe told Kilgallen that JFK had shown her space aliens hidden at an air force base. The moral Jone not aways at the end of the nursery rhyme is a warning about the dangers of curiosity, which he insinuates killed Kilgallen, rather than barbiturates. (After all, it did kill the cat.)

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group