Greg Gossel at SooVAC

The Concrete Pour of Culture or We’re Gonna Die, Let’s Make Art

Standing in Greg Gossel‘s show Broken on view through November 29th, half the fun is counting the references. The pulpy, cartoon women in his works dial a direct line to Roy Lichtenstein, the newspaper images blown up and silkscreened throughout the show are straight Warhol, the occasional blocks of red with text in bold white Impact italics could come from Shepard Fairey‘s OBEY stickers and by extension and more critically, Barbara Kruger. In the piece “Bobby”, the diagonal white and red stripes do what stripes like that do in American art in American galleries- reference Jasper Johns. But one can also read the formalism of Daniel Buren into the equation (see the cover of this months Walker magazine) which slyly grounds these seemingly chaotic Pop assemblages into a minimal formalism, echoed by the precise neon stripes on panels appearing on the untitled wall installations in the gallery. The whole concept of “decades of history that are discovered when one peels back the layers of posters coating time weathered buildings” as the explanatory paragraph states has been used in the ads the Fondazione Mimmo Rotella has been running for years in the pages of Artforum. With all that debt to pay off, it is no wonder the work is priced from $1,200 to $7,200.

But for all that obviousness and borrowing, there is a spark in the individual assembling that makes the end result more than an aesthetically seductive melange. And it’s not surprising that it is selling. Gossel chooses his images critically, from the crisp two-toned series “Michael 1-4″, Hank 1-4″, “Whitney 1-4″ and “Dan 1-4″, (Jackson, Aaron, Houston and a Dan I don’t recognize) to the bits and pieces in the painterly collages. In the collage paintings, none of the elemental images are complete, the overlapping fragments compete for space and meaning and imply a critical brokenness in the culture that produced them to produce pure images. Advertising abuts sex abutting politics, a cacophonous conflict of contemporary priorities fixed in acrylic, a modern challenge to discern meaning. The full wall dedicated to early celebrity shots contain narratives of massive popular success and cultural betrayal and failing- Hank was lost to steroid asterisk, Whitney found crack and enough ink has already been spilled over Michael already. I am sure Dan doesn’t have a happy story either.

In freely admitting the “montage of pop culture history” in the accompanying statement, Gossel frees himself to turn his practice into it’s own critique. The discomfiture of art as practiced when it is obsessed with surface culture poses a question that should be in the mind of anyone engaged in mass culture- is it the fascination with our own entropy that keeps culture moving, and how can any system so internally obsessed be anything but broken? For all the Pop precedents, Gossel may owe more to Robert Smithson than any other artist.

ALSO AT SOOVAC THIS WEEKEND:
OX-OP Arts Presents:
Non Consensual Post Dada
Constructivist Cerebral Warts
Art/Music/Film Festival 2009

Moving into the old Highpoint Center for Printmaking space next door (as Highpoint has handsome new digs on Lake Street) here is a mash-up of art, film and music. Printmaking powerhouses Burlesque of North America and Aesthetic Apparatus will be showing their torch-bearing print work, the mysterious, dangerous local artist and AmRep Records chief HAZE XXL will be showing off the limited run (only 100 made!) individual CD sleeves of the House Of Flies/Gay Witch Abortion record. There will of course, be music and film, and debauchery. The CD release Gay Witch Abortion show is Friday, Saturday HOF performs and Sunday is OX-OP stalwarts The Melvins. $6 at the door, no pre-sales, bring your dancing shoes and knuckledusters, or just go to soovac.org for more info and directions.