Paddy Johnson at Time Out Magazine: The Dotted Line

by Art Fag City on November 27, 2007 · 1 comment Reviews

paperwork.jpeg
Image courtesy Colby Chamberlain 

This week at Time Out  New York I review The Dotted Line at The Rotunda Gallery.  I’ve pasted a teaser below, but you’ll need to click through to read the whole piece.

Administrative drudgery might seem an unlikely focus for a show, yet curator Colby Chamberlain manages to fill an office-size exhibition space with paper trails generated by ten artists. Work in “The Dotted Line” engages aspects of social, political and institutional critique with humor, but the most powerful pieces also suggest a certain sadness.

Michael Rakowitz's Return largely takes the form of correspondence and receipts generated by the artist's efforts to rekindle his grandfather's import-export business, now 40 years defunct. Rakowitz's efforts to ship dates from Iraqi orchards prove futile with the majority of them being held up at customs and spoiling as a consequence. Noting the ridiculousness of delaying fruit for national security reasons, Rakowitz points out in a wall text that the dates become a metaphor for Iraqis being denied refuge in the United States.

To read the full review click here.

Previous post:

Next post: