Carl Fudge's new work at Ronald Feldman gallery in New York was good (the show ended last week). Fudge has a system where he grids a picture, then flips selected squares, creating hundreds of mirror-images of lines and patterns going this way and that within a single image. (He once used a photocopier to make the grids; now he uses a computer.) The effect is that the image--in this case a Transformer robot--looks like it's vibrating in a wormhole; turning into pure iterative mathematics before your eyes. It's interesting to see such a rigorous formal system applied to throwaway pop culture; yet there's actually more sci-fi resonance between system and image here than in his earlier work, which did the same type of "deconstructing" with classic Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock images. The Transformers are even preferable to the Sailor Moon series he did two years ago: possibly because he doesn't coyly hide the robots in abstraction the way he did the female faces. (Also because most are on canvas rather than silkscreen paper.) As usual, his craftsmanship--a combination of silkscreening and masking tape stencilling--is faultless. The new paintings are both elegant and intelligent.
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Carl Fudge's new work at Ronald Feldman gallery in New York was good (the show ended last week). Fudge has a system where he grids a picture, then flips selected squares, creating hundreds of mirror-images of lines and patterns going this way and that within a single image. (He once used a photocopier to make the grids; now he uses a computer.) The effect is that the image--in this case a Transformer robot--looks like it's vibrating in a wormhole; turning into pure iterative mathematics before your eyes. It's interesting to see such a rigorous formal system applied to throwaway pop culture; yet there's actually more sci-fi resonance between system and image here than in his earlier work, which did the same type of "deconstructing" with classic Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock images. The Transformers are even preferable to the Sailor Moon series he did two years ago: possibly because he doesn't coyly hide the robots in abstraction the way he did the female faces. (Also because most are on canvas rather than silkscreen paper.) As usual, his craftsmanship--a combination of silkscreening and masking tape stencilling--is faultless. The new paintings are both elegant and intelligent.
- tom moody 5-28-2002 10:01 pm