|
If artists Mike Kelly, Bill Traylor and Kiki Smith were to have a love child it might be Jacques Louis Vidal. This precocious young artist's exhibition and performance at gallery Sunday, entitled "Wood Folks is Good Folks" includes a number of objects, works on paper, a video and live performance events during the run of the exhibition. I first encountered Vidal's work on YouTube.com of all places, where the video "Wood Woman", which is also included in the exhibition; fits in perfectly in the online community of amateur video. In the video Vidal feeds a wooden marionette some tomato based gruel after which the figure spastically gesticulates, dances, and her head eventfully falls off to the floor in an embarrassingly awkward thud. Vidal's performances and sculptures or props exploit folksy hand made qualities, and improvisational, amateurish construction techniques to celebrate the painfully awkward moments exemplified by his ad-hoc performance rituals, masks, booklets and improbable odd ball wood figures and body parts. From the ceiling hangs the wooden construction "The Pervy One" which includes a pair of articulated legs drooping down from a blue and red skirt. It's an image reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and yet his work taps into the darker aspects of the real world and seems to laugh and celebrate. On the floor are two more figures, one is a fat torso squatting in dirty sweatpants and sneakers with a giant model of the Houston Astrodome in place of it's head, and next to that is unceremoniously plopped a Pinocchio like figure with impossibly small feet and lumpy limps all splayed out over a black rubber tube. On the walls are several works including a fascinating water color titled "Muscle Mountain". The work is a shaped paper cutout comprised of black and white interlinked muscles creating wonderful patterns emanating from a symmetrically placed animal mask reminiscent of Native American folk tales. In the words of the writer Gregg Bordowitz these "queer things don't
yield easily to comprehension." These apparently ridiculous juxtapositions
of hand made fetish objects, bawdy celebrations of live and video performance
all culminate in fascinating experiential curiosities that easily draw
the viewer in and then surprise, delight, horrify or humor. And in the
end as Bordowitz once posed "How do we (artists) approach contradictions
that seem shameful or disreputable, or awkward or uncomfortable?"
It would seem that Jacques Louis Vidal has answered that question and
offered up a schizophrenic pastiche of multiple, non-linear story telling
that organically and spontaneously result in structures that are often
notable for their comedy and impractical mysticism. By Andrew Cornell Robinson, Artist Exhibition InformationJacques Louis Vidal Sunday L.E.S The Wood Woman, 2007 Digital Video 4:00 minutes Edition of 3 Video posted on YouTube.com |
 The Pervy One, 2007 Wood, 40 x 20 x 14²  Muscle Mountain, 2006 Watercolor on paper, 55 x 55² Photos Courtesy of Sunday L.E.S. |
Written for the