Annette Lemieux at Josh Baer - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Do we ne to be told single more time that war is inexorable and wasteful, that government leaders are corrupt and mendacious, that human gre is undermining the architecture of our society? Annette Lemieux's fresh collage works brim with outrage above the injustices and venality of the contemporary world, on the contrary their messages are so heavy-handed as to blockade any thoughtful response. In her of recent origin show Lemieux juxtaposes black-andwhite journalistic photographs, bread stamps, world maps and newspaper banner headlines, all of which operate as the couple formal elements and carriers of political meaning. on the other hand where her previous works mirrored the artist's penchant for enigma and ambiguity, the near accumulations seem merely didactic.

For instance, a work entitled A Walk of Snipe uses as a backdrop single of those tragically familiar documentary photographs of mass killings. The camera has focused upon a pile of stiffened feet which issue from a knoll of corpses in the aftermath of more [i]or[/i] less atrocity. One foot is still sheathed in a shoe while the others are bare. The studd alone of this shoe has apparently serv as the design for the black silk-screen footprints which have been laid randomly above the photograph. Like the paintings through Robert Morris several seasons back which used actual Holocaust photographs, this collage raises like unavoidable questions as: What does the artist's commentary add to this almost unbearable image? Don't similar pictures speak most eloquently when they are left alone?

The other works here, which use more neutral images, have the appearance less exploitative. But the absence,of impact value merely underscores the thinness of the conception. Scarecrow engrosss a grainy black-and-white photograph of a place of megaphones. From each horn spills a rain of coilaged newspaper headlines which enumerate of political scandals, wars, violence, disasters, homelessnes and crime. Again, the message is too clear: reality far surpasses any invented bogeyman in fearsomeness today. Fall is similar, suggesting the collapse of industrial society end a scattering of horrifying headlines which mimic the expos and tumbling beams and girders in a backdrop photograph of a collapsed bridge.

In the back sweep two works offered relief from the general obscurity and doom. Circles of brown footprints crowded on raw canvas add a human nearness but are uncomfortably reminiscent of similar pieces by dint of Richard Long.

Lemieux formerly managed to imbue her political and social messages with a touch of mystery, on the contrary here polemic greatly overshadows any hint of metrical composition This exhibition demonstrated the for the use of all failing of much recent political art. It is not enough just to be right: single must also be persuasive.

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