Matthew Weinstein at Sonnabend

Matthew Weinstein's recent exhibition at Sonnabend, continuing his longtime interest in images of blood and death, brought heightened allure to the reminders of life's transiency represented by the skull and bones of the memento mori. With a passing glance at the agenda of the Saatchi Gallery's gigantic ongoing exhibition, "The Triumph of Painting," and to the iconography of the embalmed creatures of Damien Hirst, Weinstein's sculpture The Triumph of Painting (2004-05) consists of two life-size, cast-bronze skeletons elaborately suspended by cables from the gallery ceiling. Caught in a balletic game of Frisbee that recalls Jose Posada's popular satirical broadsheets made during the autocratic rule of Mexican dictator Porfirio Dias, they suggest the proximity of death in a gilded age.

Weinstein's pitcher is propelled forward with the momentum of release, while the catcher reaches through space in a long, ecstatic dive, just short of receiving the shining disk in a gesture that recalls an electric moment in a game of Quidditch. The skeletons are fixed in place and suspended by wire, the graceful vertebrae threaded with metal rods, each rib drilled through and joined with thin wire to the next. The ball joints are attached to the sockets by clamps, and the concentration of weight suspended along the length is fixed by pulleys. The left arms and right legs are gilded like sacred relics, and the crowns of the skulls are attached by simple hooks.

Weinstein addresses the vanitas tradition in "Ikebana" (2005), a series of mixed-medium paintings of floral arrangements laminated to wood supports. Measuring 60 inches on a side, they derive from the Japanese esthetic of their title, with photo-based images that variously include digitally composed flowers, a table lamp and decorated shade, a cascade of shining disks and a cache pot. Bananas and a banana flower, aerial-rooted exotics and twigs of curly willow are mirrored in black, lacquerlike surfaces that retain the halation of an airbrush along the curved edges of the support.

In a separate gallery, Weinstein covered one wall with 100 Chances for Happiness (2005), a grid of bronze cocktail umbrellas--painted and ornamented with tropical fish and flowers--fixed perpendicular to the wall. Weinstein associates the playfulness of the umbrellas with the imagery of Three Love Songs from the Bottom of the Ocean (2005), a DVD projected on the opposite wall. This engagingly awkward animated loop stars a tail-flipping diva of a koi, all eyelashes and red lips, singing in a whiskey-voiced contralto provided by actress Blair Brown. With lyrics provided by the artist, she warbles a confession to the viewer in his stead: "I like war, I don't like blood," "Where are you? I can't see you but I know you're there" and, finally, "My home is a fortress."

COPYRIGHT 2006 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning