LOS ANGELES
ETERNAL FLAME: IMAGINING A FUTURE AT THE END OF THE WORLD
The Gallery at Redcat

In the current internationalized art climate, the trope of the aging white male genius no longer holds sway, and the mainstream’s capacity to absorb new, subversive, obscure and difficult art seems inexhaustible. In this context, curating an overly-academic though intimate survey addressing the downside of globalized culture may seem counterintuitive: cultural dissolution, post-colonial identity and commerce-based diaspora are by now well-traveled territory in contemporary art. None of the six artists in “Eternal Flame: Imagining a Future at the End of the World,” the recent exhibition at Los Angeles’ Gallery at REDCAT that articulated this theme, is older than 36. The general mix of gravitas and bravado in their projects demonstrates the engaging earnestness, political depth and intellectual curiosity of their generation. However, any sense of common ground or unifying metaphor is thwarted by an awkward installation and a lack of contextualizing information. In the end, the opportunity to pursue a deeper discourse was mostly lost.

Deliberately transgressive and evasive work like Rheim Alkhadi’s sculptural installation, with its floor-level proscenium format display of a bloodied, headless animal torso amidst a disheveled arrangement of textiles and domestic props, proved an arresting visual exercise, but its visceral qualities seem forced. Any serious indictment of the spiritual or environmental dangers of cultural dilution fails to take hold. Similarly, Pratchaya Phinthong and Pattara Chanruechachai’s documentation of their attempts to bring the aesthetic and formal concerns of abstract modern art to a remote community on the Thai side of the Mekong River came across as condescending and didactic.

Paul Chan (See AAP 51) and Tuan Andrew Nguyen steal the show with their vibrant dedication to craft in the face of the disorienting and cynical content of their work. Paul Chan’s ambitious video series, “Tin Drum Trilogy” (2002-05), leads by example, presenting a compendium of video portraits of people the West has been taught to mistrust, such as government officials with propagandistic aims, ordinary though unfamiliar strangers and sundry pundits and zealots. By exhibiting multiple videos and audio tracks simultaneously, Chan embodies the cacophony of voices engaged in the international conversation on identity and values, while the work’s humor and theatrics reflect the magnitude and multiplicity of the discourse. However, the work is installed across a few clustered areas, requiring viewers to invest time in following individual threads.

Nguyen’s series of mammoth oil canvases features elegantly painted streetscapes from Vietnamese urban centers. These reveal the metaphorical and literal effects of internationalism on that country’s visual culture, the unplanned and surprisingly dynamic juxtapositions of Communist public service images, contemporary consumer product advertising and illegal “Wild Style” street graffiti, all within sight of lush green areas, public parklands and historical architecture. Nguyen’s almost journalistic viewpoint brings home the most poignant and uncomfortable aspects of the resonance and dissonance intended for the entire exhibition.

Ultimately, if one can take anything form “Eternal Flame,’ it is that despite the madness and injustice that artists find in the current culture clashes or the tensions between traditional and progressive values, it is both possible and desirable to locate beauty in the breakdown.

-- Shana Nys Dambrot