Skylar Fein was the breakout success of the first iteration of New Orleans’ biennial Prospect.1.  Fein, who grew up in New York but arrived in New Orleans in 2005, came to prominence through his installation “Remember the Upstairs Lounge.” The piece was an exhaustive historicized installation of the tragic fire that killed many patrons at a famous French Quarter gay bar.

 For his current exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Fein looks at youth culture, particularly through the lens of punk and new wave music. The massive body of work being shown - sculptures, paintings, prints, T-shirts and multimedia objects - were all created in 2009 and mark a prolific output. A lot of the work reflects experimentation and a branching out from the more rustic look of the work seen in “Remember the Upstairs Lounge.”

Surprisingly Fein began working as an artist relatively recently, around the same time he arrived in New Orleans.  His initial production included paintings on scraps of wood made plentiful by the demolitions following Hurricane Katrina. These pieces are countless and are derived from graphical imagery akin to clip art and advertising logos. In their graphic design they seem to date back to the 1950s, 60s and 70s, or earlier. They call up the re-consumption of old advertising on stations like Nick-At-Nite or other vintage TV shows. Painted on supports of ratty, stained wood, these paintings somehow seem even older. In Youth Manifesto a whole wall of them are included with stray ones punctuating the exhibition through out.

Another piece coming out of Fein’s earlier body of work is a black American flag, here taking on connotations of anarchy in reference to bands like Black Flag and Anti-Flag. Black Flag is a mixture of references, making for an interesting stew. There’s the anarchist punk connection, “a flag waved without nationalism,” states Fein in the handout. The obligatory Jasper Johns connotation one can’t escape brings up an interesting problem. Everyone is supposed to own the American flag, but as far as art is concerned, Johns seems to “own” it since he made the move to paint it back in the 50s. Fein’s black flag is also a menu board:  instead of stripes, one finds little slats of wood with hand-lettered specials like “CRAWFISH/$3.99” or “SMOKED CRISPY HOG JOWELS,” obviously Southern cooking. A piece like this also plays with the problematic unspoken cultural rules pertaining to the “ownership” of certain subject, particularly of race. A viewer familiar with art codes of identity politics could reasonably assume this was made by someone other than a white man.

All carefully crafted, with a unique touch that is tempting to credit to some sort of rustic sensibility but is probably erroneous, the works in the show are in various “finishes.” There are the wooden sings and the flag, but then there is the slick light box, Swoosh (Youth of Today) with a catchy graphic halftone enlargement of straight edge rock show. For a product like this you’d expect it to be manufactured to industrial precision. But here, no less flawlessly, the frames are handmade. It is far more interesting to see a light box made from carpentry than a fabricator. There is also something to seeing a ticket stub to an Adam and the Ants show monumentalized as a giant shiny object on the wall, far from a discarded bit of cardstock kept as a souvenir.

Level of craft is a key feature to Fein’s work. I couldn’t help comparing his Amp with the work of Kaz Oshiro, who makes uber-real objects, such as amps, out of stretched canvas and Bondo. At the opposite end of the spectrum of the high production value made-by-machines look of, say Jeff Koons, is Oshiro, whose work is so handmade it appears to be real. Both have that “gee wow” wonderment. With Fein, it is simple and straightforward; his amp has been made out of simple materials, wood and some rolling wheels. It’s form reduced to a box and the details silkscreened on it. It is well made, but not over the top, and there is something infinitely more attractive to this approach of making. It’s not a pathetic aesthetic, and isn’t a tour de force of skill. “Humble” isn’t the right word, but it’s the only word that comes to mind.

In Youth Manifesto there is a subtle sense of nostalgia mixed throughout the technology. In a line down the center of the first gallery are sculptures of boom boxes, radios, cassette recorders and even a phone with “mom” calling, spelled out on the digital display. What a funny period of time, the era of the car-phone envy. How luxurious! A phone in your car! Now it seems like such a useless place for a phone, and stupid since that’s the one place you aren’t supposed to use them. All of this is dwarfed by the stack of cassettes the size of refrigerator doors that greet you as you enter the show. I guess it is kind of a dumb thing; bootleg punk tapes originally made on the cheap with grainy photocopied booklets just made giant. But they work well as sculptural objects, and remind one of the minimalist sculptures of Anne Truitt and John McCracken on view in the adjacent galleries. But perhaps more to the point they make tangible that love of the music-object people used to so potently feel. It’s sad to think of kids now not experiencing music through a talisman like a CD, a cassette or an LP, or that time-honored magnum opus, the mix tape. For many people that was either the ultimate creative expression, or the thing that brought them into the world of art. When making a tape you have the dual responsibility of selecting the right tracks in the right order and in making a great insert for it, you can’t just jot down the names of the songs on the label Memorex included!

--Erik Wenzel

(Images: Skylar Fein, Harsh, wood, latex, acrylic, light kit; Bootlegs, silkscreen on paper, wood and acrylic; Grey Ghost & Poot Bunny, wood, latex, light kit; Courtesy of the artist and The New Orleans Museum of Art.  Photography by Michael Smith)

Like any survey, “Hot Up Here,” organized by the CAC’s Visual Arts Director Dan Cameron, is a mixed bag not expected to have an overarching narrative the way themed shows do. This cross-section, the first of a series, displays that artists working in New Orleans and Louisiana are focusing on a variety of subjects. There is the coded and rich history of the area, warts and all. It’s something that in New Orleans is never far out of mind or covered up. Others are looking at the Post-Katrina situation, more than four years on, with a more reserved conceptual approach than the immediate traumatic morning such a huge catastrophe initially elicits. It is also refreshing to see still others addressing subjects in a broader way.

 Steven Collier’s photo Untitled (Green and Pink Army) blankly stares out at you as you enter the exhibition signaling there is more than a pat collection of art from New Orleans waiting in the galleries of the Contemporary Arts Center. The image is foreboding in that it is hard to tell if there is anything in the Army duds, or if it just an empty suit. That, and the dull gray green and bright pink also draws you in.

 Entering the space is another of Collier’s, a 10 sec video that because it loops so seamlessly is endless, rather than terse, infinitely killing time. Five Finger Fillet depicts a hand, fingers spread, as a knife stabs the table between them in that dangerous game of accuracy, nerve and balls. Collier’s photos of figures in hoodies, suits and camouflage jumpers look like their features have been scribbled out. With a closer look comes the realization the neon marks that appear to be drawing on a digital picture in Photoshop are actually physical material: silly string. This play between a photographed subject, a manipulated print and the re-photograph is further at work in a series of images that combine aggressive figures confronting the viewer with sugar sweetness. Dog the Bounty Hunter and slightly trashy women from the 80s offer you ice cream, cake and a surprise party. Also on offer are an armful of puppies, their eyes cut out. Barely noticeable on the floor in front of the framed prints are neatly lined up shotgun cartridges. The message is unclear beyond a devious playfulness, but the results are captivating.

Reminiscent of Robert Williams are Scott Guion’s satires of cultural imagery with a penchant for 50’s decor. In Stack-O-Lee, 2008, that symbol of 1990’s Louisiana pop art, George Rodrigue’s “Blue Dog” is depicted with fiendish wolf-like features, and painted with a facility the character’s creator doesn’t quite possess. A snowman named Mr. Bingle–a classic Christmas icon from New Orleans department store Maison Blanche–follows the dog with a gun, fantasizing about stealing Blue Dog’s candy can, which the dog holds in it’s mouth like a fat cigar, and it’s ice cream cone worn like a hat. Above, a stereotypical devil, like in the work of Coop, floats, shooting dice from his eyes.

The thing most interesting about Guion, and artists like him, is the juxtaposition of realistically painted elements with cartoony ones. It is also odd how such imagery is made with such traditional means as oil paint, complete with layers and glazes. In a French Quarter setting, painted in a simple realist manner, a grotesque cartoony couple (that look like the aunt and uncle of the Garbage Pail Kids) have a domestic dispute. The woman brandishes a knife, the man wields a broken Dixie Beer bottle. Behind them a lawn jockey, that racist tschotcke, rears up on a red horse in a quotation of the famous portrait of Napoleon, by Jacques-Louis David. One of New Orleans’ many famous sons, Louis Armstrong, appears as a vision of Renaissance saintliness.

Michelle Levine contributes a frieze of paintings, all from 2009, that depict trashed McDonald’s signs around New Orleans and neighboring Metairie. Some are straightforward depictions; others are more abstracted through cropping and composition. These more interesting ones contain the literalized irony of so many destitute fast-food heavens along with an alienating otherness in the way a careful relationship between figure and ground can create.

Chris Sullivan accompanies Levine with another frieze, a series of small digital pictures created between 2005 and 2007 collectively titled Underperforming Billboard Dreams in New Orleans. In his statement, Sullivan explains that one thing he didn’t mind getting washed away by the floodwaters of Katrina were all the billboards. “Closer to ground, language sprouted—with a spray can, a shard of moldy plywood, a cell phone number and some useful verb (gutting) to perform, a person was in business.” The images depict such signs; the texts are funny, clever, unintentionally ironic, and sometimes desperate. “Billionaire Barber’s Club L-L-C.” “Dang Ideal Supermarket.” “Free Hot Meals Every Wednesday 12 – 2P Around Back.” There is something off about the locations, though. How did such a ratty sign manage to stay up downtown, now that all the other waste has been cleared away? It slowly becomes apparent that these signs have been moved from the out of the way places they’d originated to more prominent locales via digital manipulation. The process is most effective when they hover in between, completely plausible as a rundown billboard painted over, or added on a computer. The texts have the charm anything made out of utility and amateurism does, unintentional poeticism and graphic finesse abounds. “Free Medical Care” is written in sharp condensed lines like a metal band’s name, or the way abstracted words appear in a Thomas Scheibitz painting. “Barch Tire Floated to 701 Witte Taparas Metarie”[sic] has a lighthearted gallows humor but is almost illegible in the sign painter’s attempt to make groovy 60s lettering.

David Sullivan’s looping HD animations, Sunset Refinery, 2008, and Swamp Gas, 2009, are pretty in a garish way, they face each other in a darkened gallery, hissing, whirring and churning away a perfect mixture of beauty and decay. The color schemes combining black blobs with blues and wispy neon greens and yellows vibrate and glow. The two animations trade on the notion of how the sensation of something ominous and gloomy can be a deeply satisfying aesthetic experience.

As a whole, “Hot Up Here” provides a look not only at what cultural producers in the region are up to in terms of the burning question, “what’s it like there now?” But also engaging in personal practices that have a conversation with a broader world of art.

--Erik Wenzel

(Images: Stephen Collier, Untitled (Black Hoodie), 2006, courtesy the artists and CAC; Scott Guion, The Lawn Jockey's Revenge, Oil on canvas, courtesy of the artists and CAC; Michelle Levine, from Signs of the Times, 2009, Oil on canvas, courtesy of the artists and CAC; Chris Sullivan, Underperforming Billboard Deams (MoBeauty), 2009, billboard, courtesy of the artist and Slight Publications; David Sullivan, Sunset Refinery 2008, Still from looping HD animation, courteys of the artist and CAC)

Since my dad’s side of the family is from New Orleans, I visit regularly. This time it was for a wedding, and the whole family made it out to this very appropriate locale for such good times. Of course, whenever I go anywhere I also try to take in as much of the visual culture as possible. From where I was staying, near Canal Street, the main drag that marks the southwestern border of the French Quarter, you can catch a streetcar out to City Park, which is a big, beautiful stretch of land that includes the New Orleans Museum of Art. The line ends right at Esplanade, the street heading into the park and along a magnificent parkway. There is a great splendor to heading down this road with the palatial museum at its terminus. It is a great way to see the city, and its neighborhoods, but is also a leisurely journey, so make time for it.

Depending on where you’re staying, it is fairly easy to get around the city. From my hotel I walked through the touristy areas, into the governmental and financial districts and into the warehouse district, where the Contemporary Arts Center, along with a fair number of galleries are located.

I am always amazed by the architecture of New Orleans and this walk highlights it best. The French Quarter never fails to amaze and always makes me think of the Edouard Manet’s group portrait on the terrace, The Balcony. When you reach Canal Street all the streets change name - Decatur becomes Magazine (named for the munitions once stored there) and Chartres Street (pronounced “charter street”) becomes Camp. Although it’s no longer called “the American sector” Canal used to be the border between that and the old city colonized by the French and Spanish, hence the name changes. Canal is lined with high-rise hotels and large stores, in the center are the streetcar tracks. It’s like many major cities’ large thoroughfares and the mixture of old lampposts, palm trees and new buildings is pleasant. Continuing along Magazine Street are more older buildings, not as iconic as those in the French Quarter, but still made with a Southern charm and with gritty patinas that allow your mind to wander to some idea of the past. These give way to tall brutal skyscrapers. Including a severe Federal building that looks as much like a movie about a sci-fi totalitarian future as the other buildings make you think of film noirs. This is the sort of stuff that is so interesting. All these different styles, different eras, all on top of each other, making for a mess that makes sense and works out perfectly.

As far as damage from the Hurricane, it is hard to tell these days, especially depending on the areas you go. The downtown and French Quarter were always on higher ground, so they suffered relatively little damage to begin with. Tourism seems to have picked back up quite well, people were out and about, music was issuing from every club and on nearly ever corner someone was performing. Comparing other cities, with their stores shuttering daily due the global economic loss of confidence, New Orleans is thriving.

In areas like the lower 9^th ward, that neighborhood erased by the failed levee, after it was crippled by poverty, it’s a different story. Although this time I didn’t make it out, back in December 2008, during the Prospect.1 Biennial, signs of rebuilding were noticeable. Currently on view at the Contemporary Arts Center was an exhibition of the international architectural initiative spearheaded by Brad Pitt, called “Make it Right.” Firms as local as New Orleans, and as far off as Asia have submitted designs that are in the process of being built. According the exhibition text for “Make it Right: From Concept to Community” fourteen families are now living in the project site with nineteen more houses on the way and forty-nine more families in the process of homeownership. I was proud to learn the firm my cousin works for, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, has made two so far. I also learned the firm designed the stunning pod/structure that sat within the Hefler Warehouse, a battle-worn structure with character. The project exemplifies what I was talking about in terms of how incongruent eras, materials and forms, when combined, give the city’s space a unique personality.

Riding in the City Park streetcar from the museum, I saw only the occasional empty house, dilapidated. Only one bore the telltale brown line left by floodwaters. But in the city’s humid moldy clime, everything is always a little rotten and a little blossoming.

--Erik Wenzel

(Images courtesy of Erik Wenzel)