Image/Mileage
Curated by David Melamed

From June 19th through the 28th, 1998, Sponsored Reality presented its show, IMAGE/MILEAGE, at the Union Hill Arts and Crafts Building in Union City, New Jersey. The building originally was a 19th century silk mill, and its transformation from a relic of the industrial revolution to a site for the display of late twentieth century artworks is an apt analogy for the show.

IMAGE/MILEAGE was presented as "a framework for the exploration of all aspects of familiar images" and actively solicited work that "examines the exploitation of images in communications of all kinds, including communication confined to the art world". Because of this particular focus, the work presented spread across a wide spectrum both of styles and of materials used.

Image/Mileage Artists

James Dustin's painterly views into otherwise unremarkable scenes of trellises and truss systems, executed on repeated small panels and presented in large groupings, focused the viewer into examining views that might otherwise be ignored. There is a meditative sense to this work that undercuts the large scale of the presentation, causing a lingering discontinuity between image and presentation.

Jim Respess takes images from mass-market magazines and re-presents them in oversized upholstered silhouettes, covered in designer fabrics that, in many cases, serve as the ground for other drawn or painted images. These images present contrasts to the larger ground of the figures. Viewers are accosted, to some degree, with the experience of seeing recognizable magazine images on this outsize scale.

Dahlia Elsayed's groupings of various language fragments and snippets of everyday language, presented in several different formats, form a voyeuristic environment for the viewer. It's like stumbling onto the chattering voices in someone's head that have been captured and presented in visual form. The presentation of this work in a separate room, removed from the larger exhibition, heightens the shrine-like atmosphere.

Sharon Libes presents several images of a somewhat recognizable cross shape, located in the center of square canvases and rendered in several different media. The repeated form, which has a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't type of relationship with the viewer, contrasts an op-art-like visual sensibility with an image that is the repository of many different meanings.

Aileen Bassis presents large photographs of nondescript individuals, possibly Jewish, over-written with anti-Semitic rumblings culled from various sources. Using some of the ubiquitous materials of mass culture, the glossy photograph and the typewritten statement, Bassis presents a jarring juxtaposition of the human and the inhumane.

David Melamed's sprawling tableaux of images and materials contain multiple references to the intersections of the art world and that of everyday life. Rather than focusing solely on the articulation or transformation of a single object or image, this work stresses the relationship between images or images and materials. The power of this work, presented in a rough-edged, broadly sketched format that belies its conceptual underpinning, derives from the almost forcible juxtaposition of these sources. The viewer is led into a reexamination of their relationship with the images, as well as of the interrelationship of the images themselves.

Margaret Murphy explores the space between spirituality and consumerism with her paintings of figures taken from New Age literature. The figures, which have spray painted auras of varying hues contain charts showing the power centers, or chakras of the human figure. Murphy has placed various products over these points, with the object's packing color corresponding to the color of the chakra. The effect is a sort of Enlightenment Lite, spirituality without all the work.

Les Ayre's lead-wrapped surfboard uses lead's inherent qualities of protection and concealment to cover an object representative of movement and life, forcing a comparison between the object and its wrapped counterpart. The lead squeezed the life out of that which had been alive, leaving a residue for the viewer to contemplate.

Paul Bonelli's expressionistic woodcuts show scenes from supermarkets with people going through the everyday motions of shopping. The sharp contrasts of black and white vibrate against the seemingly innocuous environments depicted. This work in particular, with its juxtaposition of subject matter and media drawn from disparate conflicting sources, seems to articulate the overall intent of this show.

An ironic disparity or distance between image and media or method of presentation runs throughout all of the pieces presented in this show. Rather than following a pattern of entrenching these icons or images, establishing their truth through repetition or re-articulation, the overall intent here seems to be one of disassembling them for reexamination by the viewer. While individual artists differ in their particular approaches, overall the show is a solid representation of this tactic in the late twentieth century.

 
By Jim Respess, August 1998