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"Tin
Men and Others" 03/30/2004 03/12/2004
I’m
a great fan of assemblage. That’s when artists collect small, symbol-laden
objects that they “assemble” in a glass-faced box. It’s a very
popular post-modern form, especially in the City that Care Forgot. The only downside
is the lack of craft. Almost anybody can create an assemblage – it’s
a poetic medium, but not one that usually expresses much artistic skill. John
Greco acknowledges that limitation. “I don’t want to be one of those
guys with a bottle of Elmer’s glue, another shadow-box artist,” he
said. And indeed, Greco’s assemblages are exceptional. The works in his
“Teratology” exhibit at Barrister’s Gallery exhibit skilled
craftsmanship aplenty. Instead of using the usual funky wooden boxes to contain
his assemblages, Greco creates elegant copper boxes with a loping roofs and neo-classical
bases. If his windowed copper boxes remind you of French Quarter gas lamps, it’s
no coincidence. Greco, 28 has worked for Bevolo’s Gas and Electric shop,
expertly fabricating copper fixtures, since he moved to the Big Easy from upstate
New York three years ago. “Teratology” means “the study of monsters,”
and indeed Greco’s assemblages have a decidedly monstrous tone. Inside his
lustrous boxes, he carefully composes macabre knickknacks such as desiccated hibiscus
flowers, a leathery dried mouse in a trap, a skeletal pigeon, assorted skulls,
old-fashioned drug bottles and strange medical devices. His assemblages are more
austere and more carefully composed than most. The overall effect is elegantly
chilling. Greco’s macabre themes continue on the exterior walls and pediments
of his copper boxes with beautifully etched angels, devils and detailed anatomical
drawings, which were inspired by his days as a volunteer ambulance attendant.
The exterior decoration could easily detract from the interior, but Greco manages
to balance the two aspects of his work by keeping the insides dim and shadowy
and the outside etchings extremely subtle. This unerring visual balance illustrates
his growing artistic authority. “Teratology” is a tour de force for
the young artist. Everyone from Ozzy Osbourn to Bob Vila would recognize his peculiar
genius. 05/29/2003
”Altared
Images,” the exhibit of artists- designed altars at Poet’s Gallery,
3113 Magazine St, is just what you’d expect from this outré enclave.
The place is jammed from floor to ceiling with pseudo-religious assemblages composed
of baby-doll parts, melted candles, kitty-cat bones, junk jewelry, snake skins,
celebrity photographs and other rock-gothic knickknacks. The show is an exercise
in youthful, homespun art-making that blurs into a continuum of good-natured,
though forgettable, Cornellian blasphemy. Except for one stellar piece. John Greco’s
“Altaration,” a neo-Egyptian tomb made of crisply bent, riveted copper
panels, is outstanding. The medical-instrument motif puts the piece in the same
ghastly gestalt as the rest of the show, but the craftsmanship (those are acid-etched
anatomical drawings and instrument diagrams on the sides) is phenomenal. Priced
at $3,000, museum curators looking for a way to document the after-dark Crescent
City aesthetic circa 2003 consider adding this gem to their collections. The show
continues through May 31. Gallery hours are Mon-Sat, 11 a.m. to 6. Call 899-4100 04/02/2002 What
is it about old things, anyway? The patina of age seems especially desirable these
days as popular TV shows extol the virtues of antique collecting to a notion that
always celebrated modernity. Newer was always better, but now it’s in with
the old and out with the new, at least as far as some folks are concerned. Even
so, not all old things possess the same cachet. While desirable blue-chip antiquities
are prized by dealers and collectors, other, no less aged, if perhaps homelier
or less perfect items tend to be passed over., disregarded by all. All, that is,
but the occasional artist. Because artists see possibilities, or enen poetry,
where others see rubbish, and in this city such orphaned objects have inspired
no end of creative ferment. Matjames (as he prefers to be known) is a case in
point. As a maker of surreal shadow boxes, art furniture and mystery objects,
he functions as a kind of poet of the trash pile, sifting through derelict odds
and ends to find exactly the right piece that defines the puzzle. Although his
work has been seen in various alternative venues about town, his Architectural
Autopsies show at Barrister’s Gallery is perhaps his most self-explicatory
expo to date, although you still may have to dig a bit to fully appreciate what
he’s up to. True to the title, the work is rather chamber-like. There is
also something oddly exploratory about his efforts, as if he were searching out
hitherto unknown links between the pop culture of the past and the organic processes
of nature. For instance, Iceman is a box that could almost be a weathered wall
of an old building. Within the confines of its ornate wooden filigree are an assortment
of antique objects: elegant old foreign stamps, a darkly tarnished cameo in leaded
glass, mysterious metal machine parts, antique nails and the dust of the ages.
In a compartment below, the wicked long knife of a long-dead iceman hints at perfunctory
mayhem. What is it about these things? Do objects take on the aura of former owners?
Do lost items assume a secret life of their own? Not all of these works are equally
strong, but the best hark to the eerie pathos of the past, the nostalgia of things
once imbued with pride, love and beauty, now faded and tarnished over time. This
is especially evident in some of his older and larger pieces such as The Prettiest
Girl n the World, ostensibly a chair, but actually a reliquary of antique puzzle
pieces and clock parts, dismembered yardsticks, lost watch straps, metallic mystery
objects and photos of by gone ingénues such as the one in the detail shot,
above. Not part of the show itself, but off amid the gallery clutter is his magnum
opus. The Phantom Toolbooth, a mad junk collector’s equivalent of the Tower
of Babel. Insanely detailed and intricately engineered from his usual arsenal
of wooden architectural elements, iconic objects and nostalgic fetishes, it’s
an architectural wonder in its own right, filled with secret doors, hidden compartments,
mirrors revealing concealed messages – even the artist’s signature,
if viewed from exactly the right angle. A uniquely inspired totem from a promising
emerging artist. Related in form, though more gothic in tone, are John Greco’s
Wonderkammers in the adjacent space at Barrister’s. Greco has a gift for
the grim, and the assemblages in this show read like a grimier of elegant grotesqueries,
or perhaps long lost science projects that went awry. Certainly, his poetically
inscribed pig fetuses in formaldehyde have that look about them. But his boxes
are like meticulously crafted metal compartments containing objects that challenge
the senses. For instance, The Fear of Science houses gleaming steel pincers, forceps
and other tools of bodily invasion amid extracted teeth, body parts, vials of
sinister substances, preserved insects and the like. It’s all beautifully
composed, aesthetically gratifying even as it makes the blood run cold. Even when
he mixes in antique materials, the contents still seem to shriek out at you, as
we see in The Gaff, a horrific skeletal mystery creature in a rustic display case.
Much of this recalls Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum of grotesque medical anomalies
and biological mishaps, yet one senses a deeper potential in these sometimes loosely
humorous, meticulously crafted, concoctions. But for now, at least, Greco seems
content to let us take his Wonderkammers and such at face value. 03/29/2002
Barrister’s
Gallery has become the Crescent City Mecca of surrealist assemblage. The huge
space, crowded with African art, folk art, banners, bones exotic bric-a-brac and
baubles of all sorts, is a perfect Post-modern playground. Andre Breton could
move right in and set up housekeeping. Practically any New Orleans junk sculptor
worth his salt has found a place in Barrister’s exhibit line-up over the
years. This month, two young artists step up to the plate with a pair of solo
shows. John Greco’s suite of works, titled “Wunderkammers,”
and Matjames’ selection, titled “Architectural Autopsies,” are
both based on the Joseph Cornell formula – Shadow boxes stuffed with unrelated
objects that are faded, rusted, weather-worn or otherwise show the inevitable
effects of time. Greco’s assemblages are deliberately dreadful. A dead bird
clutches the perch of a rusted bird cage. A dim light bulb illuminates an antique
photograph with a weird, flickering light. Strange surgical tools lie beside a
set of dentures and preserved frog. Several leathery-looking piglets are suspended
in jars of formaldehyde on lengths of barbed wire. Some of this stuff would cause
Rod Sterling to run out screaming. Matjames’ work is more contemplative
than creepy. His small, shallow boxes contain ordinary objects such as a feather,
a butterfly, a pair of tiny rag dolls, a tin soldier and bleached snail shells.
Each of his objects seems to be a long-lost secret treasure, a souvenir without
a memory, like a flower pressed in someone else’s Bible. The down side of
these shows is that both artists are traveling very familiar territory. They’re
successfully sxploring the Cornell/Kienholz/Samaras aesthetic, but they haven’t
yet made it their own. The up side is that both Greco and Matjames are obviously
quite serious and skilled. Their works are well conceived and beautifully crafted.
It should be only a matter of time before their visions become unique.
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