Not known as an enclave for contemporary art, the neat little town of York, PA is full of historic buildings and well off the beaten track. So, it is a curious place for curators from Parker's Box, a small cutting edge gallery in Brooklyn to set up shop for a one-off exhibition. Perhaps, York Arts may have thought it would be problematic getting the public interested, but, as it happens, the galleries have set up a show that is very accessible, enough so that initiated gallery goers may be pleasantly surprised to learn that contemporary art is not all obfuscation or entirely exclusive these days. York Arts may be also pleased to learn that they are not alone in trying to bridge the contemporary art gap and they should congratulate themselves. The show borrows it's name from the recently published, "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," a book about punctuation and how the slightest change can completely shift meaning. In this case, it has to do with modifying a gallery's physical appearance to better facilitate the specific installation of art works. Small interventions are used to present art but this may change the context entirely. Parker's Box, known for drastically repositioning walls to make each show completely specific and self-contained, has used the same approach at York Arts albeit short of any real demolition. So this is part educational experience, the exhibition itself being "on the road." Common practice these days requires galleries to be more than the simple white boxes and contemporary art is way beyond the point of merely "hanging" there. Each installation has to be "read" in conjunction with the individual works themselves.

The intervention in the show, though not drastic, somehow minimizes aspects of the over designed gallery helping it to become just enough of a white box. The placement of Jason Glasser's film projection facing out not only encourages viewing from the street but can be seen 24 hours a day. More of his work can be seen in the video "lounge" which also invites the curious inside. His odd montages and musical works demand attention and evoke fairy tales. Inside the gallery, Glasser, Virginie Barre, and Ravi Rajakumar are joined by 7 other artists from the Parker's Box stable. En masse, they present a varied selection of narrative aesthetics that ties the works together. Virginie Barre's graphic novel style pieces are instantly accessible even though they use cut-up absurdist dialogue. Never mind that they are in French! Titled "Lili's Secret," the series links a sense of noir and broken narrative elements that transform them from mere illustration. Ravi Rajakumar's stills from cartoons continues this blocking of normal narrative thread. His seemingly benign backgrounds are extracted from animation on TV. With their usual noisy inhabitants extricated, this leaves only haunting cartoon landscapes. The addition of weapons from Parker's Box notorious Up in Arms show fill in the gaps in the exhibition and add ironic bite if not an element of mischief. Guns made of glass, cardboard and those cast in chocolate play with the all too familiar iconography of the gun. In a small town setting these works may have a slightly different connotation than when seen in urban Brooklyn. As art, the guns suggest ideas about our fondness for weapons, not only for the industrial shape of these things, but their interweaving into America's violent history. The playing with real versus simulation is intriguing. As with their other shows, Parker's Box uses humor and wit very skillfully as a sure fire way to foster approaches to the work. Whether overt meaning is apparent on first look, all these little ideas come together to question our day to day realities. As for bringing cutting edge work to galleries outside big cities; this is a relatively novel and exciting idea. There is an audience out there that is starved for current art that is beyond the confines of outdated regional painting and realism. If the contemporary art gap has been growing smaller, does this indicate a larger breakdown of the mythic city/country divide?

-James Rosenthal, May 2004