Violence at the Exhibition Agency

Published in Time Out Chicago / Issue 300 : Nov 25–Dec 1, 2010

There are no bruised bodies or references to war in “Violence.” Cocurated by St. Louis–based gallery Los Caminos, the show has an original take on its subject, juxtaposing pieces that assault viewers with the more subtle, introverted deconstruction of artworks themselves.

Mathew Paul Jinks’s Sheer Vanishing (Inversion) (pictured), an impressive explosion of wires and copper pipe, restricts visitors’ movement through the front gallery. Justin Gainan sucks that energy inward with his Dirt Paper Series, a painfully repressed presentation of small dirt-smudge drawings framed on pristine white mats. A video is, oddly, the piece with the most physical force: In Michael Sirianni’s Blanks, bright pops of light hurt our eyes.

Brandon Anschultz and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung address a critical need for paintings that reflect an awareness of their medium, but their pieces lack the wild emotion of Sirianni’s and Jinks’s works. While Anschultz’s and Zuckerman-Hartung’s sloppily tacked-on canvases, porous borders and rough industrial materials reveal their struggle with painting traditions, it’s unclear what role their canvases slapped with wire mesh, peeling paint and bits of glass or turned backward are meant to play.

These aren’t bad paintings, however: The way Anschultz reorients the basic elements of painting to form something new is particularly thoughtful. Anschultz lives and works in St. Louis, where Los Caminos has the same alternative status as the Exhibition Agency does here. It’s good to see their mutual support expanding opportunities for emerging artists.