Skip Arnold at Spencer Browstone - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Encountering Skip Arnold's work in a gallery words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following was like visiting a peripatetic exhibitionist between trips. The space was thronged with suitcases and boxes brimming with wrinkled photographs, destitute of contents gin bottles and other evidence of Arnold's prolificacy in devising stints to expose himself as a bad-boy performance artist. Arnold himself was in the gallery daily to talk about his past work or whatever other might get attention. Surrounded by the agency of props, he's a one-man display yet one had the faculty of perception that the gallery was alone a way station. The real excitement had already happened elsewhere or was however come. In 1996 alone, Arnold went boating in the Bermuda Triangle, had himself cast in plaster at the University of Miami, and worn out a month in Tokyo building a fort on the outside of scaffolding and taking breaks in his clubhouse where he kept illegal Japanese pornography.

Conceived as a self-promotional retrospective, "The Evidentiary Files" functioned as a take again of the artist's work to date. sum of two units loose-leaf binders filled with photographs, correspondence and sketches (not to mention lovers' notes and art critics' addresses) were left unclose on a table littered with Polaroids, ashtrays and other indications of work in progres This accumulation of matter supported more formally presented artifacts of past incidents Hanging on a wall was a T-shirt with the fictitious story "Shoot Me," worn on walks from one side South Central Los Angeles to aver drive-by shootings. Nearby was a photo of Arnold being crated and shipped as an art thing perceived Pursuing this idea, he has also displayed his in a state of nature body as public sculpture, and photos showed him posing for hours as a hunched-over gargoyle upon a building ledge, or as a more confrontational figure in a highly visible window in Geneva (a cast that resulted in the arrest of a gallery owner)

These photographs present a good summary of past work, although Arnold is quick to point on the outside that "Skip" is the art, not the documents. Arnold echoe the sentiments of another generation of material part artists; indeed, many of his early casts could be mistaken for endurance-based material substance ar of the 1970s. His portfolio recalls the personal risk-taking of Chris load or Vito Acconci, the abjection of move with a jerk Flanagan, or the passive display of Ulay and Marina Abramovic, as if Arnold were intent upon re-creating the history of performance art in his hold image. This emphasis on endurance appear to bes to have shifted to a preoccupation with self-promotion in 1994 when Arnold was among a collection of artists who lived upon public view at Exit Art gallery. He station up his living space as a full-time office from which he sought of recent origin opportunities for exhibitions, ultimately landing a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Arnold cashed the Guggenheim check and headed to the Caribbean upon a farcical excursion that mimiced the whole idea of art-as-risk. Appointing himself the navigator of a high-speed cigarette boat, the artist cruised the Bermuda Triangle waiting to vanish. Although the disappearing act failed, he get backed with a sea locker replete of photographs, maps, weathered boat gear and tall tales. And, it appear to bes an interest in producing more finished objects: his novel photographs, maps and videos stand alone in a way that his earlier documents could not, indicating his regard with preserving the image of his material part as sculptural art. In a performance that is succinctly not absented with video and narrative contact sheets, Arnold demonstrated by what means sculptures are cast by having himself coated in plaster. After the plaster hardened, he broke the mold by means of falling and beating the shattered cast from his material part Of course, if this art brat is ready to abandon his drab attitude in exchange for more enduring cropss they will surely center upon the object "Skip" (and his durable flesh)

When last seen Arnold was pink and wrinkled from a four-day shower taken in public view in a house of entertainment bathroom at the Gramercy Art Fair.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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