C.O.L.A. 2009 Recommended in Art Scene

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The C.O.L.A. 2009 exhibition features mid-career artists who have well-established oeuvres. Some of the art rises to the occasion, some is an acquired taste and a few offer welcome surprises. A video installation by Maureen Selwood falls into the latter territory. Good video art is hard to come by. Selwood, who learned her craft working with Philip Glass, combined filmmaking, using black and white footage of anonymous modern Rome, with animation and original music. The result is a stunning and absorbing lament of the tragedies over which we have no control. We can only observe and mourn. Joe Davidson is an installation artist who is fascinated with compulsive collecting and obsessive repetition. Reminiscent of Antony Gormly’s congregation of orange humanesque forms, Davidson’s butter-yellow floor piece displays casts of travel-sized bottles. The land of bottles is surrounded by framed mountain shapes, formed by layers of tape in obsessive overlays that create a landscape of process. Process and obsession reappears in the installation of Jane Castillo, who takes a bold step away from her signature work with hair and rope that makes a socio-political statement of her Columbian identity. “Brown Sugar” is the name of a fictitious sugar company, which produced the “Castillo” brand of sugar. The company logo is a smiling image of the curly haired artist printed on rough, stuffed burlap bags rising in brown columns that hang from chains. For a decade, David Dimichele has been making and photographing models of art world installations. His inclusion in an exhibition of mostly installation art is a witty comment upon artists’ desire to fill space. His work here is light years beyond his first essays into miniaturizing art world egos. The series of prints on view are his outtakes on the models for a generation, such as Roni Horn, Richard Serra, and Robert Irwin (Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park, Hollywood).
 
Jeanne Willette