Neiman Gallery exhibit travels worn path to ‘House’ of past

Walking into the LeRoy Neiman Gallery this October might feel like a step back in time to an early ’60s pop surrealist showcase. The exhibition—titled “Fool’s House” and curated by Nora Griffin, MFA ’11—combines tongue-in-cheek conceptual humor with a touch of ready-made workmanship.

The inspiration for the exhibition is a Jasper Johns painting (also called “Fool’s House”) that depicts the artist’s objects (specifically a broom, a stretcher, a towel, and a cup), as if they were actually attached to the canvas. Johns irreverently scribbles the titles of each object with an arrow pointing toward it and incorporates the text “Fool’s House” partially into the composition. The exhibition tries to use Johns’ energetic and slightly devious painting as a taking-off point for, in the words of Griffin, “an endless conversation.”

Jim Lee’s works, such as “Upper Grove” and “Diagonal Pull,” seem to tend toward the more abstract expressionist side of Johns’ contemporaries, playing with interactions of wide swaths of color, shapes, and mixed media. And while “Untitled (A Dark Composition Drawing)”—a simple black piece of paper with white rectangles—is not particularly visually stimulating, “Untitled (A Thousand Evils)”—a bright blue oval with a stripe of silver aluminum dotted with jagged pencil holes—makes up for it with an intriguing title and unique composition, almost appearing as a face with bullet holes.

Peter Gallo’s art emphasizes working with text and challenges the viewer with witty word games that engage the mind. For example, what should one make of two interconnecting circles, one labeled “philosophizing,” and the other “crying”? Is the artist trying to say that the two lead to each another? Is philosophizing a form of crying? Is he simply putting up random words to confuse viewers?

Similarly, the painting “Cannot Explain Simple Daily Occurrences” reworks the originally straightforward sentence to mess with the mind. The words “Occurrence,” “Daily,” “Simple,” and “Explain” appear in a square, with “Cannot” excluded from the square and placed underneath. Lower on the canvas, two half-full ovals that vaguely resemble squinting eyes make the painting all the more humorous and entertaining.

Becky Brown’s works take a cue from ready-mades. “Spine” consists of a thin line of the bindings of books. Distressed and splashed with paint, the piece might be an interesting take on the effects of the digital age on books. Perhaps books are destined to become representational objects on their own: objects like Johns’ broom, given a new kind of value through artwork. Brown’s intriguing floor pieces also use a ready-made approach, incorporating objects like books and bricks covered in rivulets of paint.

Josephine Halvorson’s “Seam, Peel” tries to convince us that an oil painting is a wood fence with peeling paint, mirroring Johns’ attempt to paint the objects in his painting as if they actually exist attached to the canvas.

“Fool’s House” does not really offer lots of new material or concepts; rather, it recycles old themes from Jasper Johns’ heyday. It is reminiscent of an amateurish version of a Johns-Duchamp, Neo-Dada collaboration. Further playing with the concept of the title, the exhibition is itself a “house,” fooling its visitors with imitations and mimicry that seem roughly close to the real thing.

The energy of the pieces almost lulls one into a false sense of witnessing the cutting-edge of a movement that surfaced over 60 years ago. It’s a treat for students familiar with Art Humanities to see contemporary artists building upon a past repertoire right on campus. While a trip to the Museum of Modern Art is always rewarding, for the rest of October students can pop into the LeRoy Neiman Gallery afterward for a seeming continuation.