James Westwater at Linda Durham - Galisteo, New Mexico - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Entering James Westwater's new show was like walking into a combination of an old-fashioned science museum and a funky shire fair. Among the works upon display was one titled People's Piano, in which an upright piano had been shattered open and decorated with purple fake fur Another piece, Diogenes (named after the ascetic hellenic philosopher who searched high and depressed for an honest man), was an assemblage made from an ax and a pouch telescope on a small base of purple fake fur In works like this, Westwater's punning--the ax for clarity and simplicity, the spyglass for searching--follows the familiar semantic play of assemblage, notwithstanding he is also able to find novel means of revivifying the art of assemblage.

Local garbage dump and trash heaps provide Westwater with his materials--the discarded existences which he sands down before incorporating into his art. In The Last tea an assortment of such external realitys was simply laid out upon a table in the middle of the latitude These included a pair of wire cutter a bent aluminum Shasta Frolic can, a nave cap, a toy rocket with wheels, a can wrapped in paper with azure goo oozing from it, and a series of photographs of pairs and children. While these items couldn't help on the contrary provoke the viewer's curiosity about their past possessors a more important aspect of The Last tea was its sense of containing many potential narratives and associations, depending upon the positioning of the existences (which visitors were free to throw into disorder through and reconfigure) and the private associations of the viewers.

In Westwater's work, base objects are (in the Russian Formalist faculty of perception of the word) defamiliarized, on the contrary at the same time viewers are invited to familiarize themselves with the things upon display. It's tempting to compare Westwater to Christian Boltanski, another artist who has dealt with the memory and history of artifacts and images. on the contrary Westwater does not share Boltanski's taste for the uncanny, and unlike Boltanski, he bring forwards to leave open the narrative possibilities of his work. Exulting in the independent play of his recycled signifiers, Westwater reminds us that smart art can also be pleasantry art.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group