John LeKay at Cohen - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Art in America, Nov, 1993 by George Melrod

A participant in a half-dozen trendy group shows over the past two years, John LeKay uses found objects to mirror social degradation, with varying degrees of outrageousness. The five highly theatrical tableaux of furniture, found objects and sound effects which he exhibited in his two consecutive solo shows at Cohen Gallery eschewed his previous sexual gimmickry, effectively blending humor and horror.

The problem with this work is intrinsic to found-object work: the sculptor risks becoming nothing more than a manipulator of objects already freighted with their own social meanings. LeKay does not entirely rise above this liability. But, to his credit, he does manage to create a truly edgy atmosphere, with his insistent references to bodily damage and lower-middle-class despair insinuating themselves uncomfortably under the viewer's skin.

The title piece of the show, The Separation of Church and State, merges low-rent dinginess and Christian iconography. Placed on a ratty gray rug, the work features a wheelchair set atop a bed as the centerpiece of a horizontal cross made out of planks. The ends of the cross are defined by various dilapidated household appliances - a battered kitchen sink, an electric fan, and an old TV perched on a toilet bowl (with a headless Madonna added on for good measure). The wheelchair holds an electric guitar, crowned with a Mickey Mouse balloon. In Lazyboy Jesus, LeKay places a recliner atop a shopping cart as a makeshift throne for a portrait of Jesus. The whole ensemble is bedecked by palm fronds, Christmas lights and a Day-Glo hula-hoop halo.

Lekay's ode to homelessness, Zipperdeedudazipperdeeday, is centered on another throne - an armchair holding a broken stereo speaker, which plays a tape of two bums talking and singing the song alluded to in the title. A jury-rigged shelter made of poles and plastic, and a circular barrier of tattered industrial insulation together mark the limits of this humble kingdom, whose only subject is a giant Pink Panther doll stuffed into the cagelike wire bedframe that makes up the back of the shelter.

These Colors Don't Run is at once an antimonument to to war and a functioning deathtrap. It features a wooden plank leading up through barbed wire to a bucket of oil, a walker topped with a dildo, an American flag, a pail of water in which an apparently live electrical extension cord is submerged, a gnarl of brown packing tape and a tape deck blaring Jimi Hendrix. The raw rock music extends the work wonderfully, as does the syrupy Christmas muzak in Lazyboy Jesus.

In LeKay's world, damage is omnipresent, every balance is precarious, and every stab at transcendence reeks of kitsch and desperation. For all its calculated melodrama, his work captures something akin to genuine anguish.