REVIEW
Bastard (son of hot sauce)
through Oct. 19
755 N. Ashland Ave.
Law Office
Opens a Case for the Artist-Curator
By Ayanna Mccloud
I was first introduced to the work of the art group Law Office in September of 2000 at DiverseWorks Artspace in Houston, Texas. hot sauce, a group show curated by Law Office, was the first show of the season and thus filled the gallery with a constant flow of bodies, as well as interesting responses and reactions. The show presented a mixed assortment of work, including an Uncle Sam bong, a plastic pond with fake flowers, a Chicago Public School desk painted with black magic marker, a homemade video of two artists ridiculously singing to R Kelly & Sparkle's song "Be Careful," and many pitiful abstract paintings (the paint was purposefully peeling off of one).
Many didn't know how to respond to the works in the usual art context. The works seemed inconsistent, vague, and tacky but overall hot sauce just seemed plain pathetic. At first glance, the works were way too reminiscent of the wave of "bad art" that surfaced in the 1980s and that many wished could be erased from history. Ironically the lack of cohesiveness and the power of ambiguity were the biggest strengths for hot sauce and presently seem to also be strengths of Law Office.
 Law Office, a collective of artists/curators, has mastered the art of merging the kitsch with the subversive, and topping it off with a thin layer of humor. Their work becomes luring, after a couple of glances, because it is evident that there is actually a method to their madness. This summer Law Office participated in the Chicago International Art Fair or Art Chicago at Navy Pier where they provided "artist video services." Artists were encouraged to bring a video of their artwork, and Law Office then presented the video to hundreds of people at the event, thus providing free publicity, marketing, and audience development services to local artists. Probably one of the more clever Law Office shows was a curated poker game, presented this past summer at the Arena Gallery. Law Office donated the prize money of $1,000 in one dollar bills and allowed the poker game winner, who was an artist, to walk home with the $1,000 cash prize- their example of an artist grant without the red tape.
Law Office is on the scene again with a new show in a recently converted eleven-room doctors' office. Bastard (son of hot sauce) is currently showing at the Chicago-Ashland Building through October 19. The show allows the artists of hot sauce who were selected by the partners of Law Office to now curate their own show... and thus Bastard (son of hot sauce) is born. Law Office describes Bastard as being a prime example of "the antithesis of the role of the curator." The image for the show pictures an ape dumbly staring at a skull with no sense of direction. When I emailed Davis, Darmody, Langlois, and Devine, the partners at Law Office, asking what to expect from Bastard, they replied in the usual Law Office manner, with a deliberately vague answer: "Have you checked out the website?" asked Rob Davis, as I continually probed for more information on the upcoming show.
After more probing and a little research, I gathered more details about Bastard. Bastard (son of hot sauce) is a group show of artists from New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Denmark, and Chicago presenting works in photography, video, and painting. The artists have degrees from a mix of schools including the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, CalArts, Rhode Island School of Design, Skowhegan School of Painting, and Otis College of Art and Design. Their work has appeared at the Havana Biennial in Cuba, The Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, just to name a few. So all I can say with these few details that I do know is that it should be quite interesting.
My advice to you is to check out this troupe but take them in small doses and come back for more. Law Office will suck you in, then push you away, and leave you scratching your head thinking you didn't like what you saw, but secretly you want more. It's an unsettling feeling, yet it is carefully constructed and disturbingly clever. They'll grow on you like a bad rash. I have a feeling they'll be around for a long time.
For more info contact the partners at www.lawoffice4.com.
|
