EXPLORE YOUR WORLD ROOTS & CULTURE
Sometimes it seems that fine artists do little these days but rehash the tropes of midcentury minimalist, pop, and conceptual artists, who gazed into the void with an emotionless mix of nihilistic irony and pseudo-Zen austerity. But scenesters, and attentive shoppers at Urban Outfitters, know that the aughts have been blessed with a refreshingly romantic interest in pagan subjects and iconography, often expressed with preschoolish brio: imagine an orgy in a forest with bearded unicorns sporting magic fanny packs. This work is often written off, owing perhaps to its greater visibility as a fashion statement than an academically validated movement. But “Explore Your World,” a show of “narrative” paintings by nine artists at the brand-new gallery Roots & Culture, reveals the hopeful directions this self-conscious space-hippie art can take.
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The freaked-out-pastoral look originated in Providence, Rhode Island, where it was popularized in the self-published books of artists Chris Forgues, Megan Kelso, Leif Goldberg, and Jo Dery. Former Chicagoan Edie Fake, creator of the comic book Gaylord Phoenix, is another noteworthy exponent. The artist in “Explore Your World” sticking closest to their graphic style is Kate Gronner, whose two vivid tableaux feature masses of furry animals in a dreamlike, bleak medieval-futuristic setting. Details in Gronner’s pieces include a cat-headed hipster atomizing a bunny with an X-ray beam in front of a castle and a factory with a sign that proclaims “Coming Soon, Cement City. Featuring … More Humans!” Monstrosity seems the only alternative to a culture steeped in artificiality.
There aren’t many ways for the alienated, agnostic aesthete to overcome the fixation on authenticity and inauthenticity that has obsessed artists and snobs of all stripes for over a century. The images in “Explore Your World” have a noisy joy and uncanny sense of community I haven’t found in many other shows. This is art that’s fantastic but not absurd, fanciful but not delusional. It makes bold but lighthearted claims for some kind of future, or at least the possibility that possibilities exist, viewing truth, complexity, and meaning as not unreachable but merely somewhat irrelevant.
