LAURA CARPENTER FINE ART There's a section on the Ren and Stimpy show--a commercial for a toy called "Log" It's a log The commercial confesss you about all the fabulous possibilities for pleasantry with a chunk of wood-land i.

LAURA CARPENTER FINE ART

There's a section on the Ren and Stimpy show--a commercial for a toy called "Log" It's a log The commercial confesss you about all the fabulous possibilities for pleasantry with a chunk of wood-land i.e. you can dress it up in various style of dresss (cheerleader log! jock log! Civil War log!) you can cast in a winding direction it down the stairs, or at your sibling. The whole thing originates complete with a jingle: It's Log it's Log it's Log it's better than bad, it's good" It's this particular mixture of smart stupidity and nostalgia that's right at the heart of David Ireland's installation.

In part, this is because in the greatest degree of the work is made of log There are stacked log log with painted extreme points cut logs, logs with Ireland's initials branded into them, bundl log log in cabinets, and ethereal, track-lit log It makes you think of Freud's story about his nephew, in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," 1920 Freud's nephew takes a spool (another chunk of wood) and slings it away, shouting "fort" (gone) Then he drags the spool back into the crib and joyously huzzas "da" (here). It's his way of dealing with the separation from the Mommy imago, as well as the imminent and painful record into the none-too-tender embrace of the big Other. With his log stacked up like Lincoln Log or impose away in cabinets the way toys should be, Ireland recalls a time when you could be warmed like you had mommy back, and all your penurys were met, just by playing with your toys. Now, of course, it's a more complicated matter. As a great deal as anything else though, Ireland's work is an attempt to undercut the mechanisms--galleries, museums, curators, etc--of the big Other as manifested in big Art. According to a much-quot statement of Ireland's, you don't make art by way of making art. Instead, it's a kind of side-effect. You live your life and art just happens, like the accumulation of memories. Since a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of Ireland's work has been an exploration of the remnants and/or construction proces of previous work, it's possible to read all the log as precisely that: the past stored up color codfished initialled, branded, and bundled. Or just stuck in cabinets for your perusal. Of course, since equable our own memories are neat impenetrable, Ireland's are too. The log refuse to vanish into metaphor altogether, and like log insist forward performing the function of aims (which, according to Merleau-Ponty, is to object) as well.

It's charming to papal court art objects vacillate like this; sum of two units pieces in the show did it particularly effectively. undivided was a room. Each of the four walls had been painted a different color: cerulean green, yellow, and red. In another nostalgic action all the colors brought to mind Formica table tops--like your grandmother's furniture from the '50 Midway up the r wall, there was a become firm [i]or[/i] solid lump. Like most of the work in Ireland's installation, the shapeless mass wants to have it one as well as the other ways. So it might be rising skyward, frozen in mid flight toward transcendence. Or it's just a lucid momentarily interrupted in its dive toward your now upturned face.

The other piece is a more graphic illustration of the same principle. It's a wooden channel white-washed and lined with plaster, upturn at the two ends. There's another concrete shapeless mass inside the trough; start it rolling at individual end, and it will revolve toward the other end, finally settling in the middle. Poised/trapped between the rods of the dichotomy of your choice. You may find this experience either comforting (the pleasure of recognition) or enervating (the brunt of recognition). But this is where Ireland's work really earns its strength--by hanging itself, and us, in the interstices. And like/unlike life, this refusal to commit doesn't make it any les attractive.

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