The art world remains suspicious of this sort of photography because it’s too close to fashion photography — too sugary and shallow, too obviously fun. And certainly the shtick can get tiresome. But Grayhorse has an eye for candy colors and a knack for playing dress-up. And art could use more fun.
Sharing space with Grayhorse in AS220’s Main Gallery are collages and paintings by Daniel Dubois of Providence. He still seems to be figuring things out, but he’s onto something with his mixed media piece Learn to Tame the Patterns. It’s a goth collage of photos and drawings of cobras, a tiger, a clown-faced skull, a lady giving a blow job, a Madonna and child. Plants are stuck on here and there. Then the whole thing is shellacked — or something. It oozes green-brown like a hallucinatory pop culture swamp.
At AS220’s Project Space (93 Mathewson Street), Andrew Gunnar Norquist of Providence presents paintings of paisley patterns and some cement reliefs of interlocking patterns of bubbles or squares. The stone reliefs don’t do much for me. The paisley patterns come in two versions. In one, he spins out the curlicues on soft washy backgrounds. They feel muddy and mushy. Sharper are smaller gouaches of paisley patterns in brown, gold, and fluorescent pinks and greens atop vertical stripes of turquoise and purple. The crisp flat contrasting patterns and muted versus fluorescent colors make the abstractions pop.
Read Greg Cook’s blog at gregcookland.com/journal.
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Madonna (Entertainer), Entertainment, Clothing and Accessories, More 
, Madonna (Entertainer), Entertainment, Clothing and Accessories, Fine Art Photography, paintings, Lifestyle, Arts, Entertainment, and Media, David LaChapelle, David LaChapelle, Pierre et Gilles, Less 
