By Andy Cline
First, there is the material and to anyone with simple perception these two exhibits, Dan ATTOE at Peres Projects and Pasha Rafat at Ace Gallery, Beverly Hills, fall under the same general category. They both are interested in light works, both employ neon, the manipulation of gasses and electricity, work with transformers to power the work and exhibit in light modified spaces that compliment their exhibitions. But this is as far as their kinship goes.
Dan ATTOE is a painter who has only recently ventured into light works and has taken to them as a working man takes to blinking bar lights after long days in the trenches. Witty aphorisms coupled with symbolic imagery as primitive as patriotism and god, ATTOE situates us in a deeply psychological night life environment where acute observations in the form of text echo through the stock symbolism of the American mind. When I entered the room, I had an initial feeling of apprehension, surrounded by a drunken kitsch of many a night remembered and forgotten over the years, flashbacks came of glaring Budweiser neon signs and cheap people looking for cheap thrills. ATTOE evokes this imagery in light works, neon wall pieces and illuminated light boxes with painted images printed on mylar. He executes these works with a draftsman’s hand and adds what could be our very own sardonic reflections (in text) when we encounter an eagle, an angel, skeletons, a woman’s open thighs, a gentle deer in the woods.. Here he has captured the fleeting thoughts evoked by wood panelling and low brow diversions that are both wise and self destructive.
ATTOE’s exhibition is transparent in its meaning and implications. He has found an eloquent language via contrast between a romantic American landscape and the brutish people that traverse it, who surround themselves with trophies and reflect on themselves and others, often with judgement and disapproval. I paraphrase from the press release when I agree that in ATTOE’s work there is both an immense empathy as well as contempt for the common American man and woman. He helps us to acknowledge our cultural roots. Unless a person grew up in a stinking rich family, no matter how many degrees one attains,
one can still recognize their experience, family members if not themselves in Dan ATTOE’s works. Most saliently, this exhibition takes us beyond the veneer of an utterly branded society, past the face recognition of signs and logos and on to the subtext of what these signs and symbols could or should evoke within us.
If you haven’t guessed by now, I think this show was successful but I wouldn’t have been nearly excited about it if I hadn’t first seen Pasha Rafat’s light works at Ace Gallery.
Deep in Beverly Hills, minimalism is resurrected in the work of Pasha Rafat. These works, were immediately deflating for me. Mostly geometrical compositions with homemade neon tubes, a collection of about 20 sparsely distributed pieces surrounded me. Blues, reds, yellows and whites dominated the palette and forms such as circles, X’s, diamonds, and corner pieces traversing 2 walls abounded. A persistent loud hum emitted from the transformers that supplied life to these works, an ambient sound problem that preparators grappled with for almost two weeks before reaching a solution. The gallery was illuminated when I viewed the works so they didn’t appear as they do in the images provided. They were washed out by the light. The artist should’ve insisted on how the works were presented if he wanted to achieve optimal effect. It’s telling that Rafat teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, light works capital of the world.
Rafat claims Russian Structuralism as an influence (he’s from nearby Iran, originally) and honestly, I would like to see more of the pressures and forces that are pursued in that school. Albers was more akin to the Russian Structuralists than he ever was to Minimalism, and so it is with Rafat, only Rafat’s effort seems a bit flaccid. If minimalism is the objective of these works, they seem more like Neo-Expressionist Paintings, simplistic facsimiles in the midst of earlier and better work. Even minimalism that worked didn’t work in the end. Modernist metropolitan dwellings stifled life and community and led to outbreaks of violent crime. I feel similarly with Rafat’s work. Not that I’m not a fan of minimalism. Judd had authority, Sol Lewitt was lyrical,
James Turrell is ethereal and Dan Flavin... Well, he’s complicit here, but he was there in the beginning man!!! As for Rafat, it seems that he’s following dutifully, keeping a school of art alive that has seen its day and is now stuffing it down the throats of future generations. How can anyone get excited to go see a show like this? It’s like going to a funeral. I think ATTOE could spice it up a bit with some quotes from a zombie flick or two.
Pasha Rafat has chosen a path in his image making that is protected by institutions that are similarly rigid and stifling. It seems to me that the lesser works of Minimalism like Rafat’s tends to be cruel and anti-humanist and pursues a path that kills the creative force in humanity rather than fosters it. Many artists have abandoned illusionism, explored the structure of basic geometric forms, but have been able to retain, maybe despite themselves, an identity that ingratiates us to their work. Donald Judd is a great example of a purist minimal artist whose presence was so strong in his boxes and cylinders that the work defied its lack of content and became meaningful as forms. It was Donald Judd’s form, fragments of Donald Judd’s substance, and we can feel that today... And they were interesting. Peter Halley has taken geometric abstraction and humanized it with color, speed, tension and individuated parts without turning to illusionism. Rafat’s work in the march of time will reinforce the walls and barriers of institutional art. The works will occasionally feature in a college text book, and that’s about it.
Dan Flavin Untitled (For you Leo, in long respect and admiration) 1977
