Chris Lipomi’s exhibition at Mesler&Hug imagines a series of collaborations that never happened. All of the works are painted in acrylic and oil pastels on pre-made Pearl Art Store canvases. It is as if Lipomi planned to handout canvases to artists and contract them, dead and alive, to do collaborations; but instead,he skipped that step and did them himself. Ever wonder what a Martin Kippenberger/Mike Kelley collaboration would look like? Look no further.

The resulting pieces meld famous artists’ works and styles with pop imagery, which makes it all the more fun to try and pick out each element. Is that Warhol’s “Mao” on Popeye’s face? Is Bansky’s “Flower Chucker” feeding a giraffe? Now, I imagine this game isn’t much fun for someone not schooled in art; and the names of the works exclude yet again. If you didn’t see that series of Kippenberger’s drawings from the Tate, then you might not be able to figure it out (unless someone from the gallery is there to assist). The titles of the works are names, some recognizable, others not, but all of them seem to be young artists or art professionals. From what I can gather, the names are presented to further confuse and to further exclude, as they don’t seem to have relevance to the specific pieces.

All in all, I didn't mind the insider challenges because of some of the easily grasped humor available to anyone and the appealing aesthetics of the works.

What makes the work interesting to me are the layers of humor. They are initially fun simply because of the content, then there are the art references. The humor doubles on itself because of how inappropriate and contrived it is to counterfeit collaborations and the obvious awareness the artist has of that. The titles of the pieces confuse yet again, and this adds to the inside joke of it all. Finally, Lipomi seems to be asking that we just have fun with him and not take it all so seriously.

-Sasha Bergstrom-Katz

(Images from top to bottom: Karolina Dankow, August 2008, 30” x 40”, Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas; Pilar Wiley, August 2008, 30” x 40”, Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas; Chris Lipomi, Installation View, 2008 All images courtesy Mesler&Hug)