Read full article here*
“Rage for Art (Again)” at Pierogi, through March 27 (155 Suffolk Street)
The Williamsburg mainstay ventures into the L.E.S. and opens its doors with this sprawling group show. Don’t be confused by the pair of modified Wells Fargo ATM machines lurking behind the front door: It’s a piece by Andrew Ohanesian. (Yes, it will accept your debit card, if you’re daring.) Other highlights include John O’Connor’s massive graphite-and-colored pencil text piece, a story of one man’s weeklong overeating habits ornamented with corporate logos (McDonald’s, KFC, Doritos).[*] But the most striking work is the tiniest: Patrick Jacobs’s diorama “Double Stump With Rustgill Mushrooms,” a miniature landscape with echoes of Duchamp’s “Étant donnés.”
*In addition to this information about the show, Re John O’Connor’s large-scale work on paper, “Last Week,” there are 6 different meals drawn out: the last meal requested by six different individuals on death row. As described by O’Connor —
“I was thinking about how the foods would actually taste, and how that’s the closest I’d ever get to knowing these people, as people. I thought – would the foods taste the same? Why do they and we like them? What does the human body crave at that time? There’s also strange and tragic finality to those specific choices. I can relate in very specific ways to the food choices, but not to the person’s conditions. I was interested in that tension.The individuals included are as follows (the foods are accurate) –1. Aileen Wuornos: serial killer; executed in Florida in 2002 – lethal injection2. John Wayne Gacy: Serial murderer; executed in Illinois in 1994 – lethal injection3. Ted Bundy: Serial killer; executed in Florida in 1989 – electrocution4. Timothy McVeigh: domestic terrorist/mass murder; executed in Oklahoma, in 2001 – lethal injection5. Velma Barfield: murder, executed in North Carolina in 1984 – lethal injection6. Gary Carl Simmons, Jr.: 1996 murderer; executed in Mississippi in 2012 – Lethal injection