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The Power of Selection, part 1
Fecal Face has its shit together. The San Francisco–based culture website keeps introducing us to talented emerging artists, and its Chicago correspondent, Ryan Travis Christian, includes five of them in “The Power of Selection, part 1,” the first of three shows he’ll curate for Western Exhibitions this year.
According to the gallery, Christian highlights “strange and bewildering” takes on figuration. Most of what’s on view, however, isn’t that unusual. Last fall, we started seeing graphite drawings everywhere. “The Power of Selection” includes Eric Yahnker’s Kiss the Wiz, a large-scale rendering of two 1970s albums, and Marissa Textor’s Untitled (pyrite), a small study of mineral crystals. In her Showgirl gouaches, Alika Cooper undermines three 1950s bombshells’ sex appeal by giving them crude features and unnatural skin tones.
Works by Allison Schulnik and Mike Rea (the only Chicagoan in the Los Angeles–centered show) explore weirder territory, though Schulnik’s claymation Forest is accessible enough to be the video for Grizzly Bear’s song “Ready, Able.” As Schulnik sends her one of her signature “hobo” characters wandering through the woods, she revels in the physical properties of clay, melting creatures into swirls of colors only to rebuild them. Rea brings the same brilliant craftsmanship to wood in his massive sculpture Tsavo Manhunters, Part 1 (pictured), which melds the forms of two infamous man-eating lions and what appears to be a Star Wars vehicle. Towering over the viewer, the intimidating work bridges the gap between animal and machine, entering the sublime.
