New Work & Bad News

On Saturday September 24th, I went to The Green Gallery East for the opening of NEW WORK: Richard Galling and BAD NEWS: Ian Hokin. It was my first time at the gallery. It was small and pleasant, and the building itself is interesting as a gallery, as it seems to be an old gas station or perhaps some form of burger/custard stand? Richard Galling’s paintings were modern and colorful, something I could see hanging in my apartment. They were made up of stenciled patterns using repetition and striking, intersecting lines and shapes. “The work is a kind of reiteration of the appearance of 'appearance' in today's culture.” (John Riepenhoff) They sort of reminded me of patterns on clothing that are found today and the mid nineties. I could see them being sold at a place like Urban Outfitters to young college kids. Ian Hokin’s work were more narrative and felt very amateur. There was no real style except that he liked the paint to go on very thick. His were images were ones “that have sprung from his unconscious while either asleep or floating in sensory deprivation tanks.” (J.R) They were full of creepy-looking, long-limbed men and random objects. I didn’t like them too much. Overall, I would agree with Carl Bogner in that “There wasn’t much to consider.”

Luther Price

On Tuesday September 20th, I saw experimental filmmaker Luther Price at the Union Theatre. Nine of his films were shown, all the only copy of them, which I thought was really great. Especially in our technological age when everyone is obsessed with backing everything up and making as many copies as possible, having just one print of each of his films has such a personal and almost magical feel to it. My favorite film was one titled Shelly Winters. The film was mostly a sound-based film, where you’re listening to stories while looking at a white screen. It was a found footage documentary about domestic violence. I found it deeply disturbing and profound. There was an account of a woman talking about getting abused by her husband, and a man also told his story of beating his wife. At one point he said something along the lines of “I told her I would rather kill her than get a divorce.” That was so chilling to me… I could tell everyone around me in the theatre was feeling just as uncomfortable and upset by it. To me, taking the images from the original film away helped me to imagine these gruesome tales and made the film so much more effective than if I had just been looking at talking heads. This way my imagination was doing most of the work, and we all know our imaginations can do wild things.

(The image is of a picture of part of one his film strips, where you can see that he took a 35mm film and cut it to be the size of a 16mm film. )