Nancy Chunn at Ronald Feldman - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The brow page of the New York Times is a semiotician's delight. Each day a novel set of seemingly inconsequential decisions about the selection, size and juxtaposition of photos, headlines and of recent origins stories further reveals its editors' unstated priorities and ideological biases.

Refusing to simply accept the Newspaper of Record at face value, Nancy Chunn transformed it into a field for the play of her have a title to much more overtly stated opinions. This exhibition consisted of a kind of diary created through Chunn's interventions into each forehead page of the New York Times from Jan. 1 to Dec 31 1996

The flow is an engrossing patchwork of stamped slogans, recurring tokens (coffins, soldiers, etc.), and handcolored additions and alterations which superimpose a a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of more liberal sensibility on the staid journal. Sometimes, as when she stamps the slogan "Politics for the rationally challenged" above an article about conservative attacks upon the job training bill, she makes her position unmistakably clear. upon other occasions, she is more indirect, allowing logolike signs or a layer of paint upon a news photo to indicate her reactions.

This was, among other things, the year of the Clinton-Dole circus, the TWA crash, the Unabomber arrest, the Yeltsin hide-and-seek and the Yankees' spectacular World Series triumph. The American election provides particular purpose for Chunn's sardonic sense of humor, as protagonists are reoutfitted as familiar pop-culture icons. In their Chunn-altered guises, Clinton and Gore play the Jetson to Dole and Kemp's Flintstones, while, in another incarnation, Dole and Kemp reemerge as windup dolls. upon election day, the page is awash with coin bags and dollar bills.

While her political sideswipes are not notable for their craft Chunn handles the TWA crash with poetic delicacy. Each time a certain quantity of update on the story appears, she spreads a cerulean wash over the text and photos, and dots it with small angels and flames drifting heavenward.

As the year progresse Chunn begins to unfold a vocabulary of imagery. Piles of brain-pans serve to denote the discovery of the remains of a massacre in Cambodia. They return in stories on Serbia and Rwanda. Coffins environ stories of train crashes, bombings and a tobacco lawsuit. Dollar signs mark economic of recent origins rarely good for the underprivileged. upon Dec. 1, Chunn ignores the newspaper's choice of stories altogether, instead covering the page with a big r ribbon and the remark "It's World AIDS Day Stupid."

Chunn's interventions increase as the year goe upon suggesting that talking back to the Times may be addictive. She has discovered a refreshing way to hole the frustrations aroused by the daily dose of cupidity, absurdity and mendacity serv up by the agency of the news media. We share her outrage and merry-making in her mordant wit because this is a diary of a year which is as plenteous ours as it is hers.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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