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Indepth Arts News:
"Rob Conger: Indices"
2003-06-05 until 2003-07-05
Mixed Greens Gallery
New York, NY,
USA United States of America
For the past eight years, Conger has created latch-hook rugs. But in his work, he rejects conventional latch-hook subjects -- clowns, kittens, rainbows -- and instead employs the medium to further a more critical view of American values and myths. In his latest work, taking a cue from George Bush’s "Axis of Evil," Conger has created an "Index of Evil," offering up portraits of disparate cultural icons: Jane Goodall, Leona Helmsley, bodybuilder Johnny Perry, and others.
Faced with this array, the viewer is compelled to categorize each subject in light of the show's theme: in other words, to decide where on the abstract, personal index of Good and Evil each subject ultimately belongs.
" Look at money: Cash. Investments. Credit. Internet properties. Scratch cards. Then look at hope. Look at desire. We're schizoid: we confuse our desire for beauty with our desire for money.
"Artists have become skilled at recontextualizing. When appropriation failed, artists plundered science, technology, film, sociology, and politics. The push, I suspect, has self-preservation and self-loathing at its dualistic core. For preservation, artists, slightly disenfranchised, should plunder finance, economics—paintings about building their wealth, not their transgressional identities. To avoid the fear of disapproval, of fringehood, artists should jump the fence and look at other art. That's what I've tried to do: craft, gimmick, origami, digital art, design, toys. The legacy of minimalism should be pop-up books."
- Rob Conger
IMAGE:
Rob Conger
Alan Greenspan (Bullish Al) (1999)
20" x 14"
woven acrylic yarn on quarter-inch canvas mesh
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