Plague of Plastics
Reviewed: Radimir Koch & Anna Pederson at Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York
On at Alyssa Davis Gallery is a two-person exhibition, Secrets to Graceful Living, featuring Radimir Koch and Anna Pederson. The show opened with a sceney party in a dungeon-like downstairs bar. The work is equally trendy: Hot Topic-type art that appeals to the visual interests of downtown goth boys and girls, whose press release is a monospace transcript describing a fantasy portal straight out of Stranger Things. Most of the work in the show is materially plastic: the result of “digital fabrication” using CAD, 3D printers, and embroidery machines. Let’s start with the boys.
Radimir Koch’s work is a series of 3D printed biomorphic cyber-flowers and vessels reminiscent of Alien facehuggers and Starcraft’s Zerg. Koch is clearly a strong digital sculptor, and the pieces in the gallery might have worked if they weren’t quite so derivative, and frankly, rushed. Half of them of them are bare white resin straight off the 3D printer, no paint. I wouldn’t mind this—in fact, I find it more “honest”—but their nakedness has no relationship to their form or concept, so it just seems… unfinished. The rest smell like fresh spray paint and are littered with crumbs of un-sanded resin. The sculptures look better in the photos than they do in life, which is never a good sign. 3D printing is already a fraught instrument in the arts, and if you’re going to do it, you better do it well. The press release suggests that his work “explores the cyclical nature of life and the transformations we undergo”, but I don’t see any of that in the work here. I see a bunch of ideas pulled from popular film and TV that are missing the artist’s voice.
Anna Pederson carries the exhibition with charming neo-tapestries and a sculpture that references American industrialism. I particularly like Sentries, a mixed-media industrialized craftwork, and 200 Lbs of American Born Flesh, a sculptural flowchart echoing the shape of a human body. The latter poetically systematizes the cult of industrial Man: plagued first by locusts, then luddites, then lawsuits, he “Drills Into the Earth … A Hole the Size of God’s Finger … Climbs a Tall Hill … Dies on it”. I love the literary quality here. These are the best pieces in the show.
Her other works are carefully framed and draped machine-embroidered tapestries that approach 21st-century femininity in a folk craft. Coat of Arms and Passenger and Family Unit are particularly sensitive depictions a young woman tricked out with earrings and nails waiting in the car, and another of a young girl closely hugging a horse. Another pair, Roxy and Untitled, bear the images of teenage “scene” apparel: striped long fingerless gloves and a goth-lolita tennis skirt. The tapestries are cute, delicate even, and appeal to the aughts revival happening right now. It’s on trend in a way that seems strategic and slightly hypocritical, though: why are we mythologizing malls and commodified girlhood when we’re critiquing industrial society across the room?
Koch and Pederson are talented, but like many other artists in the scene, are too trend-conscious. Three-quarters of the work in the show reads as kitsch. I wish we could move beyond gaming and girlhood to something more substantial.
All photos from Alyssa Davis Gallery’s website.