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>>MARK G. TABER: Hello everybody. Today we're going to visit The Hole
gallery on the Bowery in New York City to see Adam Green's show Houseface.
This is a large show with a lot going on so I'm going to concentrate on the
painting and sculpture because it's the core of the show and the most highly
developed part of the program. I'm going to begin with the smaller works
and studies. Here is a watercolor 18x24 inches called Flag. You can see the
geometry and colors are reminiscent of Neoplasticism and the application of
pigment is every painterly and expressive.
This is a small painting called Cat Head. Green is interested in cartoon characters
and pop culture. This bears a strong resemblance to Garfield and it is not
typical for the show but it does provide important insight into paintings such as
this one in which we can imagine Cat Head has been pushed through a grid,
made regular, and made to resemble architecture.
Here is a small work on paper that continues the architectural motif.
Animated buildings with eyes we can say, and this one goes even further it's
called Cat Facade making the architectural connection explicit in the
title. This is a good example of how the
This is a good example of how the
smaller studies and paintings have been expanded into a larger format. This is a
60x72 inch painting called Pirate Ship Formal.
The show features a group of sculpture called Zoom Cubes. 24 inch square,
painted wood, placed on the floor in the minimalist style.
Green is interested in Animism, so from that point of view we could look at these
as stand-ins for spirits in the world. The straight lines, bright colors, and grid
layout are strongly reminiscent of 8-bit computer graphics.
8-bit has become strongly associated with the New Aesthetics movement which
is a British movement interested in computer graphics and machine vision.
I think it's fair to say that New Aesthetics has a strong Empiricist and Materialist
outlook. So while there may be a superficial connection here with New
Aesthetics by way of 8-bit Green's Animism places this show on the flip
side of the coin and may be considered an alternative or even a critique of New
Aesthetics. This is a piece called Mainframe
This is a piece called Mainframe
Computer. You can get a sense of the scale by comparing it to the people who
are walking around it. This piece is very figural, Janus faced, and it's positioned
to preside over the Zoom Cubes at the opposite end of the gallery.
This painting is called Bridge. 60x72 inches and it continues the theme of built
environment animated by the spirit of something, perhaps here the spirit of
Garfield with eyes that look back at us as we go about our daily lives.
There's more to this show than I'm going to discuss. This is a movie set
installation. There's also a film on a continuous loop and more painting and
sculpture so if you want to see it all you'll have to come out in person.
And there you have it. The show is up until August 25th.