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Art is Politics by Other Means -
Compost Gallery reviewed by |
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All cultural products have an ideological position. Do they support or subvert the status quo on a number of issues such as race, class, and gender. Macchialvelli said "War is politics by other means." What he meant was that while war did not appear to look like a political debate, the use of force is simply the extension of a political battle. The same can be said for art; "Art is politics by other means." The visual artwork of Albo Jeavons, now on view at the Compost Gallery, 1318 Walnut Street, clearly aligns itself with the new anti-world bank, anti RNC movement. Jeavons contends that corporations are in control of the democratic process and are destroying the environment, personal freedom, and are in a continual struggle to suppress all those who question their authority. Jeavons' show has an opening reception this Friday, June 15, 2001 from 5 to 8 PM, and includes stuffed sculptures, drawings, t-shirts, and photographs of outdoor writings. He targets the corporation by using the business suit as the cover of his figurative works, symbolizing as Kiki Smith does, the body as the site of struggle. Jeavons makes use of found common objects, clothing from thrift stores. As a subversion of traditional sculptural emphasis on technique, this is effective, though some refinement of the sculptural qualities would seem to benefit the overall technique. The effect of leaving the hands and faces blank is to deindividualize the figures. I concluded that Jeavon's attack was on the corporation as an entity, not on the individuals within it. Brown roundish forms are shown within the hanging sculptures, obviously to represent that the corporation is filled with excrement. This subversion works because corporations strive to present a facade of pure cleanliness, from meticulous clothing and aneseptic offices to gleaming modernist architecture. While Jeavon's presentation of the inversion of cleanliness is symbolically powerful, it also does tend toward the obvious after several looks. Patriarchal maleness is another focus of Jean's attack. He presents male executive coupling with homoerotic association. The business-suited figures are sewn and bound at the crotch, creating a corporate creature that is also a kind of homosexual orgy. He has directly attacked the projection of the corporation as an emblem of family values. He also presents corporate entities giving birth, demasculinizing the macho power presented by the business suit. The use of the business suit is an essentialist symbol of maleness, stereotyping men, but the works are very effective anti patriarchal statements. Jeavon's use of the hooded Klan figure to represent the racism of the corporation is reminiscent of Phillip Guston's later works. While Guston was commenting on American society as a whole, Jeavons focuses on the corporation as the preserver of white power. I am not certain how the use of brown skin color as the aforementioned critique of the corporation relates to the race of the individuals presented. This show is subversive not only in content, but in form as well. The use of non-traditional media, styrofoam filled suits and erased magazine ads, makes these works less saleable to a capitalist art market, which values technique. The Erased Advertisements relate to Raushenberg's Erased Dekooning Drawing, which signaled an early confrontation with Patriarchal Modernism (as represented by Abstract Expressionism). Jeavons turns his eraser to the advertising industry, creating a new form of detournment, the strategy of the French Situationists to change advertisements to attack the capitalist system. Finally, the gallery space is not a formal space, but Jeavons' own living and studio space. This alternative to the capitalist gallery system is connected to the "Do it Yourself" punk aesthetic of the early 80s. While this show has the small pitfalls of a broad based attack, it is inspiring to someone create a body of works that has an ideological and aesthetic coherence, and the guts to attack the corporate power structure head-on. ©
2005 RIchard Metz and InLiquid.com;
image copyright © Albo Jeavons |
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