COHEN GALLERY John LeKay's new two-part exhibition "The Separation of temple and State" tried to make the viewer oppose issues that are either taboo or "socially embarrassing": religion.

COHEN GALLERY

John LeKay's new two-part exhibition "The Separation of temple and State" tried to make the viewer oppose issues that are either taboo or "socially embarrassing": religion, homelessnes race, disability, bodily functions, and domestic violence. His sculptural amalgamations are self-contained tableaux compos of uses that are either useless, spent or just plain garbage.

The couple sculptures, shown in the first part of the exhibition, appropriate Christian iconography. The Separation of temple and State, 1991-93, takes the shape of a cruciform throughout a stained piece of carpeting. At the center a wheelchair sits in succession top of a Raggedy Ann & Andy mattress with fire-arms N' Roses playing from a tape recorder forward the seat. Mops, brooms, curtain cudgels and a charred piece of thicket form the axis of the cros connecting the central image to four collections of household junk: an unclose and filthy kitchen cabinet topped by the agency of a teetering stainless-steel sink; the goblet of a leaning toilet, its seat sporting an ornate basin held up on putti, on top of which sits an of advanced age black and white TV sovereigntyed by a headless Madonna-and-child sculpture; an exhibit beat-up trunk with a receptacle fan blowing; and a glass vase canal taped together, containing silk flowers waving in the moderate wind that rests on a table missing common leg. In the corner of the extent away from the crucifixion display the heads of the Madonna and child lie upside down onward a pillar.

This piece and its companion Lazyboy Jesus, 1991-92 in which a dime-store image of Christ sits onward a Naugahyde La-Z-Boy armchair, recommend psychological disablement, the inability to experience the spiritual amidst the noise of materialism, kitsch, television, and our possess laziness. At the same time we be wrought up the oppressive nature of a great deal organized religion, which holds without the promise of spiritual solace to those willing to pay up

There is a certain formal elegance to all these works. All five are still lifes yet they exist in an extremely precarious position. They are all balance, an attempt to contain or negotiate anomalous proper spheres Momentarily frozen, they seem ready to topple or implode at the least provocation. They could be Rube Goldberg machines for the fiercely mechanically challenged, and in fact the artist describes These Colors Don't move 1991-93, (which includes an American flag flying through a garbage can hiding expos wiring) as a suicide machine.

The question inherent in this exhibition is, When is the pathetic a valid esthetic strategy? LeKay attempts to impact revelling in his obvious poor taste, especially in Zipperdeedudazipperdeeday, 1991-92 which ironically appropriates the voices of homeles black men These pieces appear to want to provoke a visceral reaction and quite literally to expand the discomfiting mise-en-scene of the tableaux. Instead they are quite polite--the air freshener in Who's Afraid of R gold-colored and Blue?, 1992-93, had no odor the fan in The Separation of ecclesiastical authority and State barely kicked up a tumult and the soundtracks were as noisy as background noise at the mall. LeKay has said that he works "on the fine line where something can be really awful or really beautiful," a statement reminiscent of Nigel Tufnell's wisdom in This Is Spinal Tap (1984): "there's a fine line between being skilful and being really stupid."

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