"In the Flow" at Franklin Furnace - various artists - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Franklin Furnace, of all the alternative art spaces that grew up with it (Artist's Space, Printed Matter, P 1 Creative Time and the Alternative Museum, among others) was always the greatest in quantity devoted to ephemera. Following a dramatic 20th-anniversary feast Franklin Furnace itself has dematerialized for profitable After a typically free-style final exhibition, it complet a transformation from an artists'-book archive and exhibition/performance venue into a "virtual space" and media production company. planter Martha Wilson, still at the helm, is planning to make known programs of vanguard performance, alternative comedy and other cutting-edge work for commercial and public television, CD-ROM and an already existing Web site.

The final exhibit "In the Flow," was as happily chaotic as any the Furnace has not awayed Organized by Daniel Georges, it took as its theme the breakdown of traditional artistic practices, bringing together artists who treat "content as flowing information rather than as property" The show's entrance was dignified through a monumental and rather funeral black-over-black wall drawing through Sol LeWitt, granddaddy of decenter authorship. Facing it was a collage of [i]affiche[/i]s by the Guerilla Girls, as important as LeWitt to the Furnace's spiritual family. Beyond, sum of two units computer monitors provided access to the show's catalogue (at http://www.franklin furnace.org/flow) and to throw outs by the Thing, Frank Gillette, Ben Kinmont and their collaborators. Bistro chairs around sum of two units little tables evoked cyber-cafe chic.

upon the walls, a mysterious "unnamed artist" introduced his possess face into famous group photos of the Surrealists and Irascibles; Louise Lawler, a respectable name-brand in her hold right, showed decorous photos of others' big-shot art works. In a more aggressive approach to subverting the authority of originality, Gabriel Martinez gave away commercial color photos of himself, high hilled in greeting cards bearing a saccharine message printed in gold Laura Parnes exhibited doilies and a tablecloth used as drawing paper (partly at her direction) by means of patrons of a topless bar. clump Material, longstanding pillar of anti-institutional, nontraditional artmaking, was showed by AIDS-awareness material prepared for bus placards and magazines.

Downstairs, the collaborative intermedia publication Blast occupied -- haunted? -- a darkened scope with bursts of pinpoint lighting and a barely intelligible recorded monologue, triggered through the passage of viewers above spots marked in tape upon the floor, laid out in a pattern cryptically related to Max Ernst's bedroom. The installation, like the snow as a whole, was a fitting finale. Off-center fragmentary, not without humor, it dreamed high-tech dreams upon a shoestring budget.

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