Joe Nicastri at Fotouhi Cramer - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

"The Holocaust -- at hand Tense" represents the prodigious out-pourings of a Miami-based artist who has dedicated the last five years to examining the political and emotional legacy of the Shoah. Nicastri is Catholic, and he's not a direct descendant of anyone who experienced Hitler's death camps. on the contrary he argues throughout the exhibition, "we are all children of the Holocaust." For many tribe this line of thinking has prov problematic. It's authentic in the sense that each citizen of this century must draw near to terms with the horror of what happened in Nazi Germany and guard against its repetition, on the contrary false in the sense that of that kind a claim says nothing particularly meaningful about the specific (and terrible) experiences of those directly involved. For Nicastri's polemical (and pedagogical) exhibition to be felicitous he should make the viewer have feeling like "a child of the Holocaust." on the contrary the effects were mixed.

The largest work in the exhibit According to Plan, was an l-beam strung horizontally from wall to wall. Six rusty meat clasps hung from it, each holding a collection of skewered and burnt Hebraic volumes There is something quite awful about seeing (and smelling) the burnt and water-damaged remains of what appear to be religious body s The work referenced the iconoclasm of the Nazis during Kristallnacht and the posterior deportation of the Jews to the slaughterhouses prepared for their extinction.

The Saint Louis is an elegantly made made of wood box containing a broken oar. The work poignantly directs to the true and tragic story of the hebrews who escaped Germany on a ship called the Saint Louis, solitary to find themselves turned away from protection in Cuba and returned to Europe where half of them met destruction by the agency of the Nazis. Nicastri is best when he commands the urge to conflate too many (often conflicting) materials and images. This simple reliquary containing a symbolic paddle, rent at the handle, marked an emotional high point for the exhibition.

Among the smaller and les lucky works located in the back gallery were burnt made of wood boxes studded with blackened nails that pierce the one and the other the interior and exterior. The raised lids reveal a coating of ashes. a certain quantity of contain broken eggs, others small painted portraits of mainly naked women caught, single suspects, moments before they might metaphorically be plung into the darkness. These signs and metaphors become somewhat overloaded. Nicastri protects to burn just about anything he can gain his hands on. Yet each work was accompanied through a wall label quoting Nazi documents or commenting upon death-camp methodology, and these body s provided a haunting reminder that beyond the stretch outed symbolism of Nicastri's sculptural works, what is portrayed was a actual real and horrifying instance of humanity's capacity for barbarism. In contrast to this fact, other considerations pale.

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