Strangers Collective: Narrows
Santa Fe Community Gallery 201 West Marcy Street
HIERARCHY’S DEFUNCT. THE ARBORESCENT HEGEMONY IS DEAD WOOD. TIME FOR THIS TREE to come down. The paradox of a collective of strangers
and writers, co-founded in 2014 by artists Erikka James
scale appear monumental is one of her super powers,
broadcasts a feeling of ambivalence, a timely tension
and Kyle Farrell, and arts writer Jordan Eddy (THE and
and here an outside-the-box Joseph Cornell aesthetic is
between detachment and empathy, harmonized to the
other fine publications) flooded the City of Santa Fe Arts
accomplished through sculptural space, flat image, and
sound of the axe falling, a slow march of time emanating
Commission’s Community Gallery with an intriguingly
text. Where Joseph Cornell gets wistful, Lee establishes
from Oak Tree, a simple, Naumanesque video from artist
ambiguous exhibition.
a darker (even sinister?) emotion, strung sublimely ’twixt
David O’Brien, chopping away, one smooth whack at a
Narrows refers to the small apartments and studios
time. My reading is purely Deleuzian. I see the tree as the
where the artists create their work and gather for
Our corporatocracy, founded on terrorizing slaves
status quo, the representation of a hierarchical, multi-
impromptu openings or casual critiques. The word evokes
and perpetuating genocide, currently cages more citizens
branched entity grown primarily to oppress, and I see
a romantic image of them at dawn, all boarding lil’ boats
than any regime ever. Not being a capitalist makes you a
O’Brien as the artist/activist persevering to bring about
full of artworks and ’zines, ferrying them through dire
wage slave for Wall Street, in for-profit prison, or if you’re
the great leveling that may well be right around the bend.
straits to get to the gallery space like (the record skips)
really lucky, a successful part of the new mercantilism.
What happens to the little rich boomers with (not-
refugees. Or it means younger creatives trying to make
Pluralism abounds. Drew Mc’s neo-spiritualist imagism
so-green) green invested in Wall Street, who can’t unclaw
the best of a ridiculous America that is “great again” (#1
is worth tuning into. Julia Haywood’s travel landscapes
even as negative interest rates exclude them? Playing the
worldwide) at not funding the Arts. Thank Goddess for
will carry you away, and Ben Putnam carves stone. The
casino (less than half of us even have IRAs) condones
Santa Fe. Whichever view you take, the kind, clever,
paintings by Sarah Palmeri are decent de Koonings. Of
Wall Street’s wasting of lives. Shareholders would love
careful, crafty ’zine table rewards.
special interest is an anemic (in the Duchampian sense) new
dream and dystopia.
to discuss but have to hurry to a Goldman Sachs benefit
The levels of nuance established by Minimalism and
media installation composed of three pieces by Marcus
for Israeli Apartheid, because $8.5 million a day of U.S.
the import of Conceptualist practice are now generational
Zuniga. Casual assemblages of monitors, prints, LEDs, and
taxpayer money isn’t enough.
givens. Ambiguity rises, as it did for the Symbolists, the
a projection of processing code, titled Gravedad, evidence
Yet young artists in Santa Fe are leading the escape
major modernist example, along with Dada-Surrealists,
an idiosyncratic attitude toward technology, exploring it
from the gravity of the corporate-imperialist oligarchy
of artists and writers united against the status quo.
phenomenologically to build new experiential languages
by empowering themselves and their friends. Meow
Like Mallarmé, millennial art seeks greater intimacy in
(and to leave cool trace residues on the retinas). Zuniga’s
Wolf is rumored to have stashed enough cash in three
relationship to the viewer-reader, a scale change on the
been swept into the Currents new media exhibition this
months to cover the bills through 2017. Scuba, too,
level of what matters.
summer. It’s all coming together. Don’t stop chopping. Get
(still drawingwhiledriving.com) is back in town,
The hum of comfort with unknowability is strongest in
after a stint in Brooklyn. Santa Fe Collective (across
Katherine Lee’s Shelf pieces. Lee has previously produced
from Tune-Up Cafe) foregrounds community. And in
intricate paintings of architectural spaces that exude a
June, the Strangers Collective, a diverse group of artists
similarly difficult to describe quality. Making maquette
56 | THE magazine
with friends. Build a boat.
—Jon Carver David O’Brien, Oak Tree, still, digital video, 16 minutes.
J U LY
2016