"The Granite Block" @ Overduin and Co.

Ken Okiishi

"Gesture/Data," 2013

flat-screen television, VHS transferred to UBS stick (color, sound) and oil

36 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches

Ken Okiishi

"Gesture/Data," 2013

flat-screen television, VHS transferred to UBS stick (color, sound) and oil

35 x 20 3/4 inches

Sergei Tcherepnin

"Giving Rein: Rainbow Melody," 2011

2-channel reduction for cardboard and aluminum;

SanDisk clip, audio, stereo amplifier, 16 gauge speaker wire and performance photograph

TRT: 11 minutes/6 minutes

61 x 36 inches

Pamela Rosenkranz

"Collector, Chi, Morning Walk (Yellow)," 2014

Ralph Lauren Paint (Collector) home acrylic latex paint, emergency blanket

83 x 63 inches

wall dimensions variable

Pamela Rosenkranz

"Collector, Chi, Morning Walk (Red)," 2014

 Ralph Lauren Paint (Chi) acrylic latex paint, IKEA Fargrik bowl

6 x 6 x 3 inches

I like when a show causes me to dig deeper, in this case to dust off an old book, Rosalind Krauss' "A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition" from 1999 in order to rethink her proposal of a post-medium artwork as a function of a self-differing complex rather than mere modern reduction.  

How the works in this show might represent such a proposal on one side is interesting; how they seem confused is less so.  How the works are contingent on themselves as discrete objects and how they are contingent on each other in a context of a group show, some further dependent on the gallery space itself, is toward the point and the questions. For example, to paint on the surface of a flat-screen may call attention to the complex on which its support stands (a media device processed via older systems).  The checklist reinforces this thinking because we are only meant to read the work as two dimensional regardless of time nor depth of the surface nor the apparatus itself. Hence, this work is to be understood, flat (on a flat screen, get it?) and therefore in support of someone like Greenberg's modernist reduction. 

On the other hand, works by Pamela Rosenkranz and Sergei Tcherepnin point to the self-differing complex, works that refer to things outside of themselves and contingent on both time and space of the viewing situation.  Rosenkranz "red" paint filled IKEA bowl is a case in point.  I was viewing it in relation to the yellow painted wall (see photos above); the photo documentation on the gallery's website places it within both works, ones on opposing walls (see here). I suppose this is one of the, er, um red herrings in the show.  The other concern one might register upon comparing my photos and the gallery's, is the photoshopped omission of the plumbing in the upper right-hand corner.  To me this is dissatisfying in several ways, not the least of which is how I think it to be one of the most remarkable and interesting specific features of this space. I assumed Rosenkranz did too...

Like some of the artists in this show, I haven't quite made up my mind about these things, but perhaps it's because we are still straddling the awkward transition between analog and digital kinds of living. As a way to defer conclusion, I recommend reading Krauss and get back to me. Better yet, make something of it.