Some Things Borrowed, Some Things New: Three Artists Offer a Respite From Minimalism
By William Spiegelmann, D MAGAZINE
Excerpt
Jacqueline Bishop, “Little Bromelia,” 2004
At the McKinney Avenue Contemporary last night I was thinking about repetition. I had to: the three artists on display—Jacqueline Bishop, Ginger Geyer, and Kenneth Hale—either work in series of multiples, or else pay homage to earlier artists, repeating both themselves and their precursors with always interesting effect. Karl Marx, not thinking of art of course, famously said that everything in history happens twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. In the history of art, repetition happens differently. We have a work and then we have copies, homages, pastiches, or second thoughts, by either the original artists or their progeny. And in most cases, like those at the MAC (here until May 15), the new work is infused with wit, irony, and humor as well as respectful admiration directed back to its sources.
Bishop’s “Losing Ground: Imaginary Landscapes” is the smallest of the exhibits, a series of shoes tucked into the side gallery at the MAC. It’s all baby shoes, in different styles and media, some vintage, some new, all painted or embellished with materials like hair, twine, straw, beeswax, twigs, or feathers. The 25 pairs all sit primly on pedestals at the eye level (36 inches from the floor) of a child. The room exudes austerity, sometimes weirdly challenging, sometimes beautiful in its eeriness, as you move from one pair of shoes to the next, as though trying them on in your own imaginary landscape.
