UPDATE -- I'm not posting anything at the Main Artery Facebook page anymore, but I will be posting here far more often -- I'll be grabbing some of what I wrote on that FB page and reposting it here. Below are some far more in-depth thoughts on the Will Kurtz show mentioned above, originally posted on the Main Artery Facebook page on May 23, 2013:
Will Kurtz -- "Another Shit Show" Mike Weiss Gallery, March 21st - April 27th, 2013
I've had notes for a write-up of this show I looked at for a few weeks now, but unfortunately I've been in a pretty good slump lately regarding posting here and making my own art. I'm working my way out of this stupid slump, though, and the work I saw made such an impression on me that I wanted to talk about it even if the show has been down a while (hopefully a few of you will want to look the artist up after reading this).
The Brooklyn-based sculptor Will Kurtz presented "Another Shit Show," an exhibition of site-specific work at the Mike Weiss Gallery this past March and April. Kurtz filled the gallery with life-size sculptures of dogs, made from wood, wire, newspaper, tape, glue, and various canine and human detritus. The dogs, of a variety of different breeds and sizes, goofily took part in the types of activities in the carefree manner anyone lucky enough to live with a dog or three will instantly recognize. The central gallery in the rear of the space was the scene of a put-upon dogwalker, appearing to give all she had to maintain order among a half dozen or so of the animals.
I'm a dog fanatic, so I probably would have greatly enjoyed Kurtz's show based on nothing other than the masterful job he did capturing the likenesses of the dogs utilizing such humble materials. There was much more to these dogs, though.
Looking closely at one of the dogs ("Seamus," a mix of what I think was Lab and maybe some sort of hound, taking a dump near the entrance to the gallery), I noticed that his 'fur' wasn't made from random scraps of newspaper, but was instead comprised of bright and colorful pieces of what at one time must have been a New York Times fine arts section. Across Seamus' back & shoulder, the word "Artist" caught my eye immediately, as did a little piece of Munch's "The Scream" on the dog's snout, right near an anti-barking shock collar Seamus was wearing. Once I got past my initial chuckle at the thought of a piece of art in a Manhattan gallery depicting a big ol' pooch straining to take a crap, I started putting these little scraps and other props (an unattended leash attached to the dog caught my eye as well) together. "Say," I thought, "it seems like the artist might be trying to communicate something beyond the indisputable fact of dogs' awesomeness to me here!"
Seamus the shitting lab mix stands in for the artist. Is he pinching a loaf of art for his rich collector/owners only when he is told, only where he knows he won't be punished for doing so? Or perhaps, given the scrap of Munch's existential angst, the electric collar there to stifle Seamus' own 'scream', and the abandoned leash, are we to understand this dog as a metaphor of the squelched expression of the repressed artist, shitting as an act of rebellion, defiling the constraints of the gallery system he wants to be a part of? Of course, it could simply be that Seamus is telling us that a lot of art is shitty these days.
I don't know which or if any of these ideas that I read in this and the other pieces in "Another Shit Show" are 'correct' or not; I really never concern myself with that too much when looking at art. Kurtz's work in this show epitomized some of my own personal criteria for what I consider successful art - that is to say, the work was engaging in a number of different ways, and I was thinking about it for a long time after leaving the gallery (still am, I guess). The dogs Kurtz made worked so well visually that I was able to easily discern the subtleties and nuances one sees in real dogs, and the gesture and movement and body language the artist was able to capture was amazing (made me smile the same way I do when watching actual dogs goofing off). Given that the modest stuff the surface of the works was made of had actual content, the works had multiple layers of meaning, without bashing viewers in the teeth with the some kind of message or agenda.
The day I looked at the show, I had spent the previous coupe of hours at shows of two of my favorite painters of all time, painters whose work I could stare at for hours. I ended the day at Will Kurtz's show, and unfortunately made it to the gallery only 20 minutes or so before they closed up. Despite the too-little time I was able to look at these, Kurtz's dog sculptures pretty much stole the day for me.
-- by Aric Calfee
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