They love art

NYC artists invade local gallery - in a good way

BY KELLE SCHILLACI

Maybe you've noticed the enormous pink brassiere billowing over Main Street. It could be that you didn't recognize it as such; it deflates a little on rainy days, and sometimes one of the enormous cups gaps inward, inverted, while the other puffs out in a quick breeze, filling with an imaginary wind puff of über-boobage. The title of the site-specific installation is "Dust Bustier," and it was created by artists Lisa Hein and Bob Seng as part of Dust Gallery's NY heart LV exhibit, featuring the work of more than a dozen New York artists.

The concept and vision of the show (initially sparked between curator Lisa Stefanelli and Dust owner Naomi Arin in '04) is simple. It's not (thankfully) a bunch of New Yorkers presenting their artistic homage to Vegas. It's a bunch of artists extending a gesture of friendship and artistic goodwill, one that could (and hopefully will) pave the way to future creative exchanges. Stefanelli, a painter and former gallery owner, has a keen understanding of Arin's challenge of running a modern art gallery in what's often considered an art-ambivalent city, having taken on a similar challenge herself in the past.

The 15 artists she helped assemble, while linked by the fact that they're all successfully functioning full-time artists (not necessarily the norm), represent a diverse sampling in terms of subject and delivery. Still, the cumulative exhibit serves as what Stefanelli describes as a "cross-pollination" of the most powerful artistic impulses to arise in NYC in the late '90s. The same Gen-X era that careered Douglas Coupland and his quirky new post-post-modern, self-referential cubicle dialect had a decided effect on the art scene, which Stefanelli describes as an abstract focus on "biomorphic forms and cartoon imagery" (Matt Groening meets Peter Schuyff?).

This smart combination seeps through much of the collection, from Kathleen Kucka's colorfully abstract honeycomb formations to Sarah Trigg's carefully delineated over-head terrain views, in which subject matter is initially mysterious if not for the titles: "Saddam's International Airport," "Baghdad Overview" and "North Baghdad." Suddenly, the thick black splotches blocking arteries of expansion and overlapping onto the wall make more sense, but Trigg's subtlety plays well beside Peter Fox's more blatant "jokeson youjack," in which the message is the art, neatly packaged in thick block letters.

Fox's adjacent piece, "garden of," captivates as viewers nose up the impossibly thick globs and balls of color-mixed paints perpetually sliding down the canvas, the paint frozen in a near-threatening motion of slowly losing itself (quite beautifully).

Karen Arm's spacey "Untitled (globular cluster)" was created especially for the exhibit. It's a pinpoint cosmic spattering against a pitch-black sky that somehow balances cold and warmth, while Shawn Spencer's figural "Romance of Finitude" offers a disarmingly soft-spoken, cartoonish portrait of a droopy-eyed bird being tenderly kissed by another, a capturing of very human emotion, expression and narrative, told through a pair of scruffy lovebirds.

This late-'90s aesthetic -- the endless search for warmth amid the colder climates of technologies and abstract market hype and collapse -- is captured as equally in images of swirling infinity as it is in Daniel Davidson's sketches of slouchy slacker figures, hunched and huddled in black and white against a cacophony of psychedelic background noise. Or stripped to ribs, veins, eyeballs and fedora in another untitled work. Anna Pederson dispenses with flesh altogether and goes straight for the guts, pinpointing what's ailing us all.

If there's one aspect of the show that Stefanelli regrets, it's that the collection is painting-heavy, rather than offering a larger cross-section of mediums. Still, the inclusion of Hein and Seng's outdoor installation piece and Elizabeth Gray's "Cliffwalk" video offers thoughtful fodder. (The video will make you cringe and grin, guaranteed.)

Other artists include: Inka Essenhigh, Tricia Keightley, Matt Magee and Natasha Sweeten.

New York might be the "it" place for artists, but Stefanelli is quick to point out that there's never an implied exclusivity. This is work that people from all walks of life can easily access and therein find both humor and heart. The idea of inviting members of a vibrant art community to share in ours is a leap in the right direction when it comes to expanding our local scene.

Several of the artists are flying out for Dust's First Friday reception on Feb. 4. Come out and make a pen pal.

Correction

Roger Thomas is executive vice president of Wynn Design and Development and was one of the panelists at Third Thursday's inaugural event at Godt-Cleary Projects on Jan. 17.

NY heart LV

Dust Gallery

1221 S. Main St.

702-880-3878

Through Feb. 23

Opening reception: Feb. 4, 6 p.m.

Free