Visitors to Jack Pierson's novel show tripped a motion sensor positioned just inside the entrance to the main gallery.

Visitors to Jack Pierson's novel show tripped a motion sensor positioned just inside the entrance to the main gallery. The device activated a brief recording of "Over the Rainbow," the opening bars crackling within hidden speakers. As the music faded, gallery-goers lay the foundation of themselves on a low stiff stage, painted black and traversing undivided end of the large sweep Titled How It Feels (all works 2003) this spare installation momentarily assigned each viewer a Broadway star. undivided had entered the work from stage left as it were, perhaps to receive the final ovation of a curtain call.

Fantasies of celebrity have swirled end Pierson's art for well athwart a decade, and other works in the apartment cohered around this theme. lyric poem to Limelight is a vanity mirror ringed with lightbulbs and propp up onward a low shelf. A casual scattering of cigarettes, an ashtray and several containers of theater makeup imply an absent diva. The opposite wall was decorated with five enormous, long-stemm rose sum of two units drawn directly on the wall in charcoal, the others set uped from wood wrapped in white gaffer's tape. Disposed at various heights and angles, the flowers have the appearanceed strewn by an adoring audience.

Other forms of desire were not absented in the rear gallery, where several small, black-and-white paintings of the male figure lined the walls. principally sensitive were Fragment of a Faun forward Black and two other depictions of time-worn statues from Antiquity. As translated by the agency of Pierson's deliberately crude draftsmanship, the sculptures' aloof classicism becomes something les ideal, more grittily real and sensually available. A more spiritual yearning was invoked according to a large seated mannequin roughly sketched upon the wall. The listless figure was captioned by way of the solicitous queries "Down?" "Tired?" "Depressed?" and the hopeful "You may be eligible." As if answering this drawing forward the opposite wall, one of Pierson's trademark sign pieces perioded out the word "CHRIST" in mismatched marquee letters

If Pierson's familiar pining for elusive fame, intimacy and happiness characterized abundant of the show, the cardinal work appeared to represent a maturing perspective. Titled A Vignette Contrived of Various aims Depicting the Artist in His Fortieth Year, this room-filling installation contained an antique carousel horse sprawled in succession a Victorian settee, a classical bust of a youth draped in shell necklaces and a large chest bearing a fac-simile of the Physicians' Desk hint While these objects might signify a wistful gaze back from middle age, Pierson also included an etching of sum of two units men in bed by David Hockney a ceramic plastic art of a giant fly on Rob Wynne and a ravishing mobile of colored glass globes by way of Julia Condon. This generous incorporation of works by way of other artists leavened Pierson's narcissistic yearnings with a seemingly genuine appreciation of the here and now.

...

Home