Big brash borough: at the freshened-up Brooklyn Museum, a large, crowded exhibition showed the borough's art scene growing in scale, diversity and ambition

Art in America, Sept, 2004 by Gregory Volk

Jack Risley's three upright mops connected by a duct system made of metal and felt, a mutant cleaning device that couldn't possibly get the job done (Undone Again, 2001), was one of the more pared-down sculptures in the show. Ward Shelley was represented by a colorful vendor's cart from which he and his collaborators have dispensed Rice Krispies Treats in the streets of Williamsburg (Vendor, 2004). The Plexiglas-paneled cart is fitted with, among other things, wooden toys, kitchen implements: red and yellow neon lights, and several videos chronicling its sojourn in the streets. On view elsewhere was Shelley's Williamsburg Time line (2002), a lithograph charting the evolution of the neighborhood's art scene in loving detail.

From Politics to Play

Large-scale media installations were scarce in "Open House," perhaps due to spatial constraints. An exception was Stephen Dean's DVD video projection of crowds at World Cup soccer games (Volta, 2002), in which fans stand en masse to lustily cheer, hoist giant-sized banners, dance, groan and cavort--depending on their team's fortunes. Dan Devine conflated nature and culture in a large chandelier made of crystals, brass dinosaur bones, tiny video monitors and surveillance cameras (Material from Grasshopper Brains Can Self-Assemble into Computer Sensors, 2003-04). More typical were works playing on individual monitors. Kate Gilmore showed a hilarious yet somewhat disturbing video of a woman (herself) wearing a slinky black cocktail dress and black stockings, ready to go out except for one problem: her foot is stuck in a pail, immobilized in what seems to be plaster or concrete (My Love Is an Anchor, 2004). Futilely, she hammers and tugs at the pail, and grows frustrated and sooty--a metaphor, perhaps, of love troubles mixed with creative block. In Jennifer and Kevin McCoy's video installation The Kiss (2002), a woman and man kiss ad infinitum as they shift about in a herky-jerky fashion reminiscent of robots or computer games. Sadly tucked away in a basementlike covert more fit for buckets and mops than video was Oliver Herring's piece showing various people performing staccato, often speeded-up elemental actions (Basic, 2002). Perry Hoberman showed an ever-changing data-filled monitor (Your Time Is Valuable, 2003) calculating how long you've been watching it and how much time you save in comparison with watching a 10-minute video. Hoberman questions the role of art in an era of accelerated time, vast information and short attention spans.

Many Brooklyn artists take an unflinching look at world events and domestic issues. Emily Jacir's From Texas with Love (2002) is a video of a one-hour trip through rural Texas, all road and vast landscape, accompanied by a soundtrack with 51 songs chosen by Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Jacir asked each of them to name the song they would most like to hear if they could drive for an hour in any direction without encountering a border or Israeli checkpoint. What you hear are Palestinian and other Arab melodies, American pop tunes, world music and rock songs, and what is touching is the implicit wish just to do something normal in a part of the world where things aren't normal at all. Jane Fine's eye-popping acrylic and ink paintings feature tanks and swirling battle scenes on some cusp between representation and abstraction; you guess that events in Iraq must be very much on the artist's mind.