Kim MacConnel: Slice of Life, Luhring Augustine Chelsea installation view
Kim MacConnel: Slice of Life Luhring Augustine Chelsea
531 West 24th Street, New York
October 25–December 21
The legendary Holly Solomon Gallery, with its unique roster of artists from, Laurie Anderson to Christopher Knowles, was the home base, so to speak, of Pattern and Decoration. As a founding member of the movement Kim MacConnel, together with his compatriots–Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Miriam Shapiro, Valerie Jaudon, Robert Zakanitch, Barbara Zucker, et. al.–produced a disruption by breaking with predominant, but waning, Minimalism. All the while retaining the grid as a foundational structure girding up their fresh practices. They also, unintentionally, formed a bridge to the soon to emerge East Village scene, the impending explosion of contemporary art and the New Wave 80s.
MacConnel, in this revival exhibition, is represented by work created between 1978 and 1982 covering the peak years of the era that climaxed with Neo Geo and neoExpressionism. In a sense these are time capsules embodying the quiver of possibility and offering release from the predominant intellectually elite dogma. The embrace of the oft disparaged realm of craft played into the shock of the new, the au courant mantra of Modernism–presenting an unexpected schism all while respecting the continuum by investing in revisionism.
Non-Western, pre-Columbian and ancient cultures have been long accepting of the practical crafts, and the decorative, subsuming all into a broader definition of aesthetics. It was about time that contemporary Western art followed suit. P&D provided an opportunity to follow precedent by absorbing the loom, the quilt and the clay vessel, etc. into the high art canon.
The sway of the blockbuster Treasures of Tutankhamen, that toured six American cities during the period under consideration in this show, brought an interest in all things Egyptian with a vast reach, from the choice of the moniker Memphis by the critically and popularly celebrated design and architecture firm to Sun Ra’s cosmic phantasmagoria, down to the dissipating ripples of The Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian. MacConnel’s integration of this influence is closer in spirit with Steve Martin and Cyndi Lauper’s interpretation, eschewing the scholarly in deference to ferocious panache. While I am confident that my fever dream of this connection has merit, I must admit that it could just as easily be the result of having gone down an Egyptology rabbit hole as post election balm.
Read full article at whitehotmagazine.com
