Toilet Design, The Visceral, and Zizek at Volta

by Rob Goyanes on March 5, 2016 · 2 comments Art Fair

View outside pier 90

View outside pier 90

It’s a grey frigid Thursday, and the cold is not quite dizzying.

Pier 90 juts out onto the Hudson River. In poetry, the volta is the sudden change, the modulation which shifts emotional pitch or cognitive focus. During Armory Week, Volta is the art fair of galleries presenting artist solos. Though I’m unfamiliar with many of the galleries participating, I know immediately the first thing I want to see: my bladder begs.

As relief washes over me, I think of Zizek’s observation that the presence of ideology can be found in toilet design.

The French—hasty purgers—put holes in the ground in the back of the room. With the old German design, the hole was in the front of the bowl, creating a shelf for the ritualistic inspection for traces of illness. Anglo Saxon toilets, the pragmatic middle, have bowls filled with water, so the shit and piss will linger, then get flushed away. At Pier 90, the toilets are near the entrance, more by chance and flexibility than by design. Maybe the toilets at art fairs are imbued with the ideology of hyper-mobile capitalism—and maybe I am thinking far too much about this.

As I walk through the fair, it’s lunchtime and there’s a calming hush aided by the carpeting, which is loosed and wrinkled in some areas. Exhibitors sit in chairs at desks, some on the floor against the wall of their booths, and—statistically speaking—every single one of them is on an iPhone, iPad, or Macbook Pro. Which works for me, as I’m trying to look at the art and avoid human contact as much as possible, though I’m not exactly sure why. It has something to do with desiring a purity of aesthetic experience, unclouded by explanation, but which also results in hating nearly everything because I’m only able to see the half-baked platitudes. These inevitably only serve to remind me of mine own, which I am doomed to put to the page.

As if by some kinetic-aesthetic force I am drawn to the more visceral works. Paul Pretzer’s tragicomic paintings, at the Marc Strauss booth, depict many deaths goofily attacking humans, are formal and surreal, somewhat stiff save for the bends in cliché. Galerie Kleindienst is showing Julius Hoffman’s portraits, which are like Archibald Motley’s—vibrant portraiture of exaggerated buffnesses and busts, but some have a digital glaze and hybridic quality. A freakily human-looking wolf face jumps out at me, like a nightmare from the Internet.

Most compelling, at the moment in time, were the more realistic human subjects, such as Keunmin Lee’s pencil-drawn figures committing and receiving torment at the Shin Gallery booth; Gavin Nolan’s hyperrealist portraits with random, non-realistic, sickly splotches of green, strangely and sorta delighting (at Charlie Smith). The Season booth showing Mike Simi’s work had lamely ironic text art, including a sad Mac and neon of the -100 emoji,  but also a pretty good sculpture of a man in all black and on all fours with a lamp up his ass.

Nadine Wottke’s erotic porcelain figures are seen performing carnal deeds at Widmer+Theodoris, belying their smooth n’ shiny ceramicness. Inna Levison’s clay works at Ten Haaf Projects seem playfully cute at first, frolicking in classical scenes, but upon closer inspection include tied-up drowning women and KKK members performing horrible acts on their black victims. (Rather than making me think, they made me uneasy in a not compelling way.) Aaron Johnson’s grotesque, inside-out corpses caught fornicating by a skeleton under the bed were better (STUX Gallery), as were Geraldine Swayne’s small morsels of impressionistic intimacy (New Art Projects). 

Diverging from the theme of the bodily destruction and desire, other touchstones of the fair include the sculptures by Toshiya Masuda at Gallery Kogure, which were kinda cool to look at since they do a good job of mimicking the effect of pixilation; Maria Rubinke’s ceramic mushrooms for their Home Depot aesthetic (Martin Asbaek Gallery), and the photorealistic paintings of white people caught in mid-party by Emerald Rose Whipple at Galerie Jan Dhaese. By this point in the fair, after circling the rectangular parallel paths multiple times, I find myself back by the bathroom, and realize that the entrance is also the exit.

Behind the booths at Volta.

Behind the booths at Volta.

Aaron Johnson at STUX gallery

Aaron Johnson at STUX gallery

Cameron Platter at Hilgerbrotkunsthalle

Cameron Platter at Hilgerbrotkunsthalle

Che-Yu Hsu at Nunu Fine Art

Che-Yu Hsu at Nunu Fine Art

Emerald Rose Whipple at Galerie Jan Dhaese

Emerald Rose Whipple at Galerie Jan Dhaese

Gavin Nolan at Charlie Smith

Gavin Nolan at Charlie Smith

Inna Levison at Ten Haaf Projects

Inna Levison at Ten Haaf Projects

Jeffrey Teuton at ROCKELMANN &

Geraldine Swayne at New Art Projects 

Jeffrey Teuton at ROCKELMANN &

Geraldine Swayne at New Art Projects 

Jeffrey Teuton at ROCKELMANN &

Geradline Swayne at New Art Projects

Julias Hoffman at Galerie Kleindienst

Julias Hoffman at Galerie Kleindienst

Keunmin Linn at Shin Gallery

Keunmin Linn at Shin Gallery

Maria Rubinke at Martin Asbaek Gallery

Maria Rubinke at Martin Asbaek Gallery

Mike Simi at Season

Mike Simi at Season

Nadine Wottke at Widmer+Theodoris

Nadine Wottke at Widmer+Theodoris

Nadine Wottke at Widmer+Theodoris2

Nadine Wottke at Widmer+Theodoris2

Paul Pretzer at Marc Strauss

Paul Pretzer at Marc Strauss

Paul Pretzer

Paul Pretzer

Raquel Paiewonsky at Yellow Peril

Raquel Paiewonsky at Yellow Peril

Toshiya Masuda at Gallery Kogure

Toshiya Masuda at Gallery Kogure

Leaving Volta

Leaving Volta

The toilet at Volta

The toilet at Volta

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