Buzz Spector at fiction/nonfiction and Laurence Miller - New York, New York

hum Spector's show at fiction/ nonfiction consisted of just three works. be congealed Freud was just what its title promised: an industrial freezer that contains sum of two units large blocks of ice, encased in which are the many whirls of Freud's collected works. Each work seems to float separately in the ice, with the lettering upon the spine clearly visible. The turns are arranged in numerical order in three more or les straight files but a few volumes are deliberately skewed to break the regularity and add a touch of the artist's hand.

I can think of no other author whose works, shackled in ice, would loan themselves to such irony. initially praised as a liberator of mankind from the grip of hidden neurose Freud has in novel years been castigated as a sexist whose theories have been used to justify male dominance and fastening women into the same advanced in years bondage. What does the ice exhibit here? Ice may kill or entrap, on the contrary it also preserves. Are the volumes being protected against the ravages of feminist critique? individual might even imagine an approving note: the freezer after all, is where single goes for nourishment.

Recollections (Shells) is a beautifully crafted cabinet with a number of separate compartments arranged in a rectangle around an devoid of contents central space. Each compartment contains a shell of the species Xenophora. These curious mollusks camouflage themselves from predators by dint of collecting smaller shells, pebbles or other debris, which they attach to themselves through means of a sticky secretion. In the center of the cabinet Spector has placed a description of these mollusks' habits as well as a quotation from Walter Benjamin: "The greatest in quantity profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes above them." Recollections (Shells) functions simultaneously as a ready-made shell collection, a natural history task and a lovely work of art. With his comparison of the instinctive protective habits of mollusks and mankind's primal desire to bring together objects, Spector wryly but not ungenerously tips his hat in homage to the acquisitive spirit.

In a separate present to view titled "66 Ruins" at Laurence Miller, Spector exhibited eight collages incorporating antique postcards. These works juxtapose views of European castles and ruins with images of American factories. it was left to the viewer to draw the conclusion: the American industrial sites, signs of America's might 50 or 100 years ago, are today as decrepit as the remains of earlier European power arrangements Other works, like Rust Belt, also play upon the motif of vanished industrial glories, testifying to Spector's search for an appropriate image of America's post- industrial age.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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