Art Capsule Reviews
Collect All Four How about if we collect two instead? Julie Farstad uses stark imagery to convey a nightmarish reality, placing painted toy baby dolls in compromising positions; the slightly grotesque, shiny baby fat in her paintings is indelible. In “Bad Bad Girls,” one doll lifts the dress of the other for a spanking against an austere, glowing-red background. In “Stunt Girl’s Sweet Reward,” the girl doll has fallen down a model clay staircase as clay butterflies flit about in an empty, green world. Allie Rex’s untitled works are a series of complex, delicate paper sculptures. One captures vague memories of a childhood visit to a theme park where boys and girls ride a twirling swing set; another uses colored pencils to create a paper version of a fireworks display. Linnea Spransy’s cold, diagrammatic illustrations meander, though, and Kariann Fuqua’s obtuse and almost impressionistic renderings of urban locales look straight out of Office Art, circa 1981. Through July 29 at the Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art, 2020 Baltimore, 816-421-5665. (R.T.B.)
Empty Thoughts, Lame Excuses, and Decorative Lies Ryan Humphrey’s first solo museum exhibition consists of four pieces: “Vantasy,” the driver’s side of a tricked-out, 1971 C-10 Chevrolet van; “Honky Spaceship,” a battery-powered installation panel that pumps out the beats of Public Enemy and Run DMC; “Rear Window,” the tail section of a Ferrari mounted on plywood; and “Velocity of Transparent Aspiration,” a BMW 7-Series hood painted in the distinctive slash pattern of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar. The artist has taken the inherently gritty, masculine cultures of guitar rock, hip-hop and auto customization and melded them with the postmodern concept of ready-mades. We suspect that Humphrey is trying to pay homage to that on some level, but in a pristine white gallery, his work looks self-indulgent at best and pretentious at worst. Through July 2 at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick, 816-753-5784. (A.F.)
Family Pack: Artists Exploring Parenthood In her exploration of parenthood, Betsey Schneider apparently discovered that her children are specimens to be examined through a camera lens like bacteria under a microscope. “Seven” is 350 images of what we assume is her 7-year-old daughter in basically the same pose at various stages of undress. (Though this isn’t the focal point of the piece, we can’t help but notice that the girl is completely disrobed in 25 of the snapshots.) Suzette Bross gives us a more humorous depiction of parenthood by photographing her child in-utero. The belly that eclipses her face in “Self-Portrait (obstructed),” which peeks out from the frame of another picture and duels with the toothbrush in still another, could be the character in a low-budget horror film titled The Belly. In “Day Before Daphne — 1 thru 4,” Bross hits a more somber note, digitally engraving pictures of her hand-swaddled belly into four heavy crystals. Through July 29 at Society for Contemporary Photography, 816-471-2115. (A.E.F.)
Marcie Miller Gross: Density In seven site-specific pieces at the Paragraph, Marcie Miller Gross continues the theme of repeated shapes, lines and textures evident in her Foldoverfold exhibit at the Kemper a few months back. It’s more benign, though — there’s nothing immediately compelling about the seven felt-and-wood works on display. “Cream (Section) #1” hangs like a beige flag representing an imaginary Martha Stewart nation, all soft, warm and fuzzy. “Cream (Vertical)” and “Cream (Horizontal) #2” are mild and passive — they nearly disappear on the gallery wall. More interesting is “Untitled #1,” where the perfectly horizontal shape appears like a primitive piece of meat (made of industrial felt), with beautiful bass wood as the bone. “Untitled #2” continues the motif, altering the shape only slightly for a bump in the center. “Cream (Horizontal) #2” and “Cream (Horizontal) #1” are essentially flip-flopped versions of each other, with a barely discernable difference in the width of their felt strips. Gross works in an intentionally narrow landscape that sometimes doesn’t leave room for the viewer. Through July 8 at the Paragraph, 23 E. 12th St., 816-221-5115. (R.T.B.)
