Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Visual Arts / review An open letter to Harrison Keys
Posted by Jessica Blankenship @blanketboat on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:17 PM
Harrison Keys...shit, man. Why you gotta play with my heart like this? I went to the opening for your show Pressure Luck at Get This! Gallery last Saturday, all atwitter with anticipation—I’ve much enjoyed most of what I’ve seen you do in the past, and I was hungry for more. This was going to be a juicy feast of tasty art goodness, I just knew it. I even skipped dinner. And then you go and leave me feeling empty.
- so have more interesting things.
At first, I thought I was pissed because a lot of the pieces appear to invoke the same tired old quarter-life crisis, bittersweet-disappointment-spiked-with-leftover-adolescent-idealism that hipsters have been employing in art for a painfully long time. Which is fine, I guess—we all get amnesty for going through a phase of expressing those feelings, either through bad poetry, bad music, or bad art. It just usually occurs during the days of tidal teenage hormones and biblical acne. But then I realized that it only appears that this is what’s happening. In truth, there’s not damn near enough emotion to even pull that off. After some of the killer shit I’ve seen from you, Harry, I wasn’t expecting these good-looking but disconnected missives of superficiality.
- I'm feelin' the ambiguity too.
If the technique was going to be (can I say this?) simple, and the design sparse, then the content should have brought the bang. Pared-down paintings of powerful subjects are fantastic. But I wasn’t even demanding power; I would have settled happily for something particularly insightful or clever. And as I made my way from piece to piece, looking for connection, starving for a bit of emotional evocation, I didn’t find it.
- no, i am not.
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