Erica Baum at Clementine - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

As libraries make the transition to computerized catalogues, many still rely upon drawers of index cards. In greatest in quantity respects card catalogues are no match for computer databases, on the contrary the quaintly fastidious cards, smudg through the fingers of past researchers, remain far more likely to yield serendipitous discoveries and look to have far more appeal as raw material for art works. single of several artists currently focusing upon card catalogues, Erica Baum approaches them with a linguist's organ of vision for found poetry, discovering unintended relationships in random names and phrases filed in alphabetical order. While Baum is obviously well-versed in language theory, her black-and-white photographs of outmod catalogues have a dried wit typically lacking in post-structuralist iscourse about archives.

Take, for example, Baum's photo of an unclose drawer with tab dividers placing "fasts and feasts" in like manner close to "fat," with "fate and fatalism" looming just on the outside of focus in the background. Separated solitary by the edges of well-riffled cards, the make subordinate headings are loaded. Finding the McCarthyite "subversive activities" for a like reason close to the benign category of "suburban homes" Baum invokes cool War politics. Indexing associates terminuss only by chance, but chance can yield its have a title to odd logic. Take, for example, Baum's photos of drawers with easy in minds such as "Jersey City -- Jesus" or "Sex Differences -- Shirts." Always ready to exploit the readymade crank by contrasting the sublime with the mundane, she bares a Dadaist absurdity perhaps closer to Fluxus clinchs than to Duchampian metaphysics.

These spare true copys underscore the particular esthetic appeal of Baum's images: visually based upon receding series of horizontal lines, the photos of files of cards, still ranged in their file drawers, have a hard-edged, minimalistic quality that suits her conceptual bent. on the other hand at the same time, the topics identified by dint of the cards -- such as "fasts and feasts" with its implication of material part states -- emphasize content, a different artistic preference

Textual without becoming didactic, Baum's linguistic play is informed through our era: post-structuralist, postfeminist and post-Foucauldian, Baum go intos the library conscious of her place in history. The imposed limitations of this material part of work may imply a limited focus, on the contrary Baum emerges as an artist to be watched.

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