Bunnies and last physical ordeals--the two main ingredients of Nayland Blake's work--turned up again in his latest display "Reel Around.

Bunnies and last physical ordeals--the two main ingredients of Nayland Blake's work--turned up again in his latest display "Reel Around." The recent offerings also base the artist treading, typically, between the sinister and the hilarious, between the transcendent and the banal. A elephantine fluffy, white rabbit suit near 16 feet in length, The Big common (2003) was sprawled out like an enormous animal-skin rug forward the floor of the main gallery, doing a useful job of controlling the cavernous space. The oversize style of dress also brought to mind other times the bunny has shown up quite through Blake's oeuvre. Though probably inscrutable to the uninitiated, Blake's lop-eared albino mascot respects a range of cultural signifiers related to the artist's identity as a biracial gay man, including Brer Rabbit, Playboy, put drugs intos and the real-life rabbit's proclivity for fucking. To those not in the bend however, the piece may have appeared a well adapted soft spot to take a nap.

The good of breathing resounded throughout the gallery, creating the sensation that someone (the artist?) was lurking nearby. In fact, the noise was the soundtrack to Correction (2004) a series of nine color DVD playing in succession small television monitors placed in a rank along one wall. Each monitor showed the shirtless artist--he has a formidable, tattooed torso--against a white wall, a tube that appears to be a microphone dangling from united nostril. In each shot, he is positioned and lit slightly differently. each so often a person paces into one or another of the frames just lengthy enough to slap Blake across the face, incline differently and leave. The unflinching artist withholds his gaze fixed straight ahead, his breathing stubbornly steady. Rapt viewers serveed toward nervous laughter, sometimes identifying other artists as the singles doing the slapping.

A secondary slightly more disturbing video forward a 7-minute loop, Coat (2001) showed Blake making on the outside with the artist A.A. Bronson The sum of two units are scarcely recognizable since the pair men have cake frosting smeared all throughout their faces--one chocolate and the other vanilla.

Blake's work harks back to the career of performance artist and self-proclaimed "Supermasochist" cut short Flanagan, who made a continual spectacle of his admit aptitude for achieving out-of-body experiences via corporeal pain. Blake's work, however, minds to be much more stylized than Flanagan's. For instance, the color scheme for the current show was regulated to black and white--with the exception of schmaltzy, trailer-park-chic iron-on designs onward two black, child-size bunny suits. Strung up by means of their ears on metal wires, they dangled in a manner reminiscent of lynched bodies. undivided of the designs riffs forward a recent MasterCard ad campaign: "two beers, three margaritas, four Jell-O shots: getting to take domicile the girl who drank all the above, priceless." Here, as usual, Blake isn't completely clear about what he's driving at. In the extremity it may be just this elusiveness that helps maintain viewers engaged with this provocative, disturbing artist.

--Sarah Valdez

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