Art in America - March 2016_

EXHIBITION REVIEWS ART IN AMERICA 141

Around the central axis of each, six Android tablets areaixed at

regular intervals. Rather than being activated by touch, the tablets

respond when the spools are rolled across theloor, displaying data

such as a Google Maps image with a red line being drawn across it

and views of Earth from Mars. A related six-channel video instal-

lation,Tablet Tumbler: Flat Roller, shows footage from 11 tumblers

equipped with cameras rolled through homes. Developed over sev-

eral years with support from multiple institutions, the quasi-clunky

“Tablet Tumblers”show some degree of technical prowess. But

instead of revealing the lengths to which nonprofessionals must go

to reconigure the touch-screen interface built into mass-market

tablets, the toylike medium threatens to trump the message.

McKay’s computer gameOmega Mouseboiled down techno-

logical disorientation to its simplest form.he rudimentary shooter

game for up to six players takes place on a wobbly 3-D ield,

complete with gridlines, which tilts as more players join the action.

Lucas created a more pointed trio of works on the theme

of climate change in South Florida.Sole Soakeris a single-player

video game where the user “walks” along a twisting roller coaster

above a distinctly swampy landscape with rising sea levels. he

player might topple of the ride, inding herself submerged in

oceanic depths. Once in the ocean, she bobs along for a minute

or two before water levels fall, returning her to the ground.Sick

Wa v e s, a video, shows dizzying images of a crashing surf rotat-

ing at diferent speeds in concentric rings. he least successful

work in the trio is the most conventional:Inventory, a sculpture

resembling a surfside refreshment cart with 3-D-printed replicas

of items like ice cream cones and sunglasses.

he strength of Lucas and McKay’s work lies in its refusal

to be classiied. It doesn’t it snugly within established aesthetic

categories, since its obsolescent technology is neither completely

polished nor willfully neophyte. As technology marches forward,

it will be fascinating to see how they navigate the course.

—Wendy Vogel

GIORGIO MORANDI

DavidZwirnerandthe Center for

ItalianModernArt

Like the softly repeated murmur of a prayer, there’s something both

comforting and conservative in Giorgio Morandi’s career-long

ainity for painting small still lifes of bottles, vases and other objects

arranged in his studio. he Italian modernist has long been consid-

are arrayed around central abstract shapes, a collage piece (a noirish
ilm still, a section of pink linoleum) or, most often, a rectangular
box containing a patterned design, the compositions evoking
illuminated medieval manuscripts. Instead of saints and martyrs,
though, you see pinup women and leather men. Instead of divine
lightning bolts, you see lightning bolts straight out of Marvel.
Although modestly scaled (the largest measure 30 by 22
inches), the drawings feel expansive and fantasy-laden. Images
of ighting dinosaurs, a lactating siren, and a cowboy angel who
sits above an oozing orange blob are not what you’d expect from
the maker ofSpiral Jetty(1970) andAsphaltRundown(1969)—
although the orange blob does look a bit likeGlue Pour(1969). In
Untitled (Man in Colonial American Dress and Indian), an image of
a colonial man is surrounded by a woman in a Wonder Woman-
ish bra, a bare-chestedIndian, and a man wearing only an oxygen
tank and mask who looks (despite his nudity) like he could be
from an apocalyptic sci-i lick. Together, such igures comprise a
wild tour through American history and iconography.
Born in New Jersey, Smithson had moved to New York in
1957, and was clearly reveling in the raucous city while transmuting
eclectic pop-culture signiiers into art. (he show was titled “Pop.”)
You very much sense that the artist, who grew up Catholic, was
exploring his sexuality during this time of rising sexual freedom and
experimentation. hevertical wall-hung assemblagehe Machine
Taking a Wife—featuring a photo of an industrial machine at one
end, a photo of a nude female torso at the other, and an attached,
phallic rectiier tube in the middle connecting them—is an
absurdist combination ofthe ultramasculine and the ultrafeminine.
With such pieces, the exhibition ofered a valuable look at the
searching, eccentric work the young Smithson created while on his
way to becoming one of the era’s most visionary artists.
—Gregory Volk

KRISTIN LUCAS AND

JOE MCK AY

Postmasters

“When it comes to code and software, I’m really just an amateur,”
said Kristin Lucas in a 2013 interview for this magazine. he new
media artist’s concern is not mastery of technology, but rather its
demystiication. Her results are often glitchy and imperfect. Per
Lucas, this approach “reinserts traces of labor and production into
something that would otherwise be seamless.” In that sense, her
practice resides between the slickness of innovative tech art and the
boundless enthusiasm of Post-Internet art, which translates Web
culture into both screen-based and traditional mediums.
Lucas’s recent exhibition with frequent collaborator Joe
McKay, titled “Away from Keyboard,” promised to “playfully
redirect the user experience away from everyday prescriptive move-
ments,” according to the vaguely techy language of the accompany-
ing artists’ statement. But the only pieces that actually changed
the way visitors physically interacted with technology were three
“Tablet Tumblers” (all works 2015). Created by Lucas and McKay
under the brand name Electric Donut, these sculptures take the
form of waist-height aluminum cylinders that mimic cable spools.

Kristin Lucas:Sole

Soaker,2015,virtual

environment with

sound, Mac mini,

projection and

game controller,

dimensions variable;

at Postmasters.