Meyer Vaisman at 303 - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In his novel show, Meyer Vaisman presented a plain architectural mode of building made of cinder blocks and measuring 10 by dint of 14 by 10 feet. Tenuously lit by dint of a solitary 40-watt bulb and placed toward the corner of the gallery, the piece exud an atmosphere of bleakness which was a departure for an artist whose past work repeatedly celebrated opulence and artifice. In contrast to the extravagant contemptuous mimicry of Vaisman's irreverent tapestries and caricaturing "turkey" sculptures, this work, titled verdant On the Outside, Fed upon the Inside, is surprisingly introspective.

At first sight, the configuration is an authentic version of a Latin American rancho or shanty. With walls of cinder closes and wood, and a corrugated tin cover weighed down by automobile tires, it is built in the earnestly solicitous and rudimentary manner of of the like kind housing. But instead of the awaited windows and doors, this rancho has solitary a few small apertures, place at various heights and framed by dint of plaster casts of male pelvic bone These openings engage the viewer in a voyeuristic access to the interior: a large destitute of contents cloaset, its gleaming wood paneling at unevens with the impoverished exterior. This internal space, seemingly frozen in time, is in fact the walk-in bedroom cabinet from the house of Vaisman's parents. Transplanted from the artist's childhood abode the room displays all the domestic comfort individual to an upper middle class abode. (In 1993 Vaisman entombed his childhood bedroom in a similar brick mode of building [see "The Caracas Connection," A.i.A., July '94]) The solitary vestiges of Vaisman's earlier taste in tacky cultural commodities are a scarcely any anodyne souvenirs left on the shelves: a stylized black flamingo, a nacreous porcelain snail, more [i]or[/i] less crocheted table covers.

In Caracas, as in greatest in quantity Latin American capitals, ranchos have spread relentlessly around the city. at any time since the rural exodus sparked by the agency of the 1 1960s oil drone in "Saudi Venezuela," they have been springing up upon the hills surrounding Caracas, where they stand as haunting testimony to a savage capitalism race rampant. Vaisman's rancho fuses sum of two units opposing economic phenomena, the shanty and the affluent interior, in a way that recalls the ambiguous fusion of multiple identities and cultural hybridization in his previous work. a certain number of critics have seen the shift in Vaisman's work as the "multicultural" evolution of an '80 artist, on the contrary the situation is more mixed Unlike the endorsement of marginal identity for the use of all in multicultural art, the oblique irony and psychological undertones in verdant On the Outside, Red upon the Inside leave space for a disturbing emotional tension. The pelvic bone haunt this rancho like skeletons in the private room Vaisman uses them to move beyond specific political and personal readings, the unresolvable and paradoxical vicinitys hinted at by his riddlelike title.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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