Changarittos at the Nail Shop
This Winter while the art bubble woopie cushion was quietly deflating galleries faced the always awesome task of maintaining a bottom line and intellectual integrity – at least that’s what we like to think. One humble example of this was Tony Labat’s relational aesthetic piece "Bulk" featured at Queen’s Nails. The gallery (and it is a gallery not an art space thank you) was transformed into a social club that encouraged interaction and community among its members. The work ostensibly existed as a plywood bar where you could get cheap cans of Tecate for six-weeks or more but was intended as a space for social dialogue. As the exhibit wore on successive visits revealed that this human hamster cage began to get a little ripe and that the only notable dialogue to emerge seems to be the impression that an SFAI faculty member exploited an embattled reputation of an adventurous gallery space. This is not to say it wasn’t art worth experiencing but it did reassert the pervasive presence of risk in artistic experiments. In this experiment the result merely confirmed the second law of thermodynamics which says an ordered system tends to disorder. And as Rirkrit Tiravanija has said in so many words before. You sit waiting around for something to happen and then nothing does.
Enter Maximo Gonzalez. This May show ironically for the time features paper cutout images constructed from devalued Third World currencies. In addition to this there are sculptural exhibition carts called Changarrito featured as readymade vending platforms. These carts are intended to feature work by emerging artists and spoof the art market touting an alternative economy. This paradigm is an intellectual toy in the same space with Gonzalez' currency art. The reason for this seems to be that the Changarrito is not really that interesting given the past 150 years of economic history and the simple fact that tons of street artists have already done it in some context or another – If you’ve gone into the 49 Geary street galleries during 1st Thursdays you might have passed a portable gallery set up out front which has the same presence if not intent. Is it that it’s from the third world?
Anyway the assembled cutouts are presented in a traditional Mexican mural format featuring tanks and trees. The subject deals with how third world countries are still bankrupted by their colonial past of resource acquisition and military oppression – not a particularly fresh idea since the neo-colonialist World Bank has been around for more than half a century but the familiar theme is charmingly portrayed using inexpensive money. In the back room the cutouts [ in a word ;) ] exploits the portraiture on some bills to create semi grotesque-erotic figures using the heads of Freud, what looks like Jordan’s King Hussein, others figures. The addition of a leafless tree seems out of theme with this wall but echoes with the front room tableaux. One wonderful piece in the Changaritto room is a book that has been cut into revealing sections of pages in layers. Since the book is a compilation of designs each exposed surface creates a rough hewn yet seductive three dimensional relief. All parts of this show are beautiful bohemian expressions - some poetic and some, ummm... povera.
