Saints, sinners, paint
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• ART OF DARKNESS
If you were looking for a portrait of soulless shithole America, you could do no better than the installation that Alexi Antoniadis of Newtonville and Nico Stone of Chelsea presented in the group show "Salt of the Earth" at Montserrat College of Art this summer. Ingredients included a cigarette stuck into some poopy-looking thing, a gravel-and-concrete block scrawled with tedious graffiti, and a bent subway pillar supporting a block of cement dotted with chewing gum. Everything was familiar but off, and off in a way that seemed truer than true. I couldn't shake their bleak vision. But "Salt" also included the tonic of Watertown artist David Curcio's folksy patchwork prints and drawings — bears, mills, and cameo heads that felt like a lovely dream from the 19th century.
