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Calvin Reid and Roger DeGennaro at Philip Alan - New York - Brief Article

Art in America, March, 2002 by Cathy Lebowitz

The East Village spirit carries on beyond its 1980s heyday in exhibitions like this two-person show of Calvin Reid and Roger DeGennaro on Avenue B at Philip Alan Gallery, an unusual tenant/landlord collaboration. Gall Stein runs her storefront management office as an artist-designed gallery showing artists who are or have been tenants in one of her three buildings.

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Artist, art writer and comic-strip buff, Reid showed six recent drawings made with permanent marker on rag board. Mixing imagery culled from his everyday life (baseball paraphernalia, plastic bottles, a shoe) with various verbal expressions and plays on words, he creates multiple perspective grids within a single work. The lettering serves an important function in constructing the space. The largest piece was a triptych, in which the central panel is shorter than the sides, called Go Figure (2001). At 40 by 104 inches overall, words and images come at the viewer in dazzling complexity. On the central sheet is the phrase "Take your best shot," printed frontally. On the side panels, other words--"long distance," "sexual," "informal"--angle toward central vanishing points. Various line drawings represent a saxophone, a small car, a bit of a Picabia image and a clothed female figure. On the right side of the central panel, running from the top to the bottom of the sheet is a naked self-portrait. The dense work comes off as a portrait of the artist in both mind and body; it is packed with so much information that each viewer can take away only a part of the whole, an incomplete reflection.

DeGennaro, an East Village writer who has presented readings of his stage and radio plays, including "Tar and Feather," on WBAI, showed printed editions, sculpture and digital photographs on canvas. Sometimes appropriating advertising methods, most of his visual art expresses a topical satiric wit. Setting the stage, a small print in the window pictured the American flag under the slogan "Celebrities Will Save Us." A digital print on canvas of the NYC skyline with the twin towers burning announced "Greetings from New York City." A carry-on suitcase titled Suspicious Luggage had a clear window that revealed sticks of dynamite and a timer inside. Although some may think such pieces offensive or dismiss them as one-liners, they do provide a moment of relief from the tension that current events have produced.

Calvin Reid and Roger DeGennaro at Philip Alan - New York - Brief Article

Art in America, March, 2002 by Cathy Lebowitz

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