[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[2][4](1) "Gyration Subscription," enamel on canvas, 28 x 21",
1995.
(2) "Untitled," enamel on canvas, 1995.
(3) "Untitled," enamel on canvas, 1995.
(4) "Untitled," enamel on canvas, 1995.
(Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica)
Bill Barminski's multitude of image and text cut-ups have been working against
the grain of good old common sense--the dollars and cents of ahmerican consumerism
that is--for a number of years now. Paintings, CD-ROMs, prints and sound
works rearrange the 'classical' archetypes of the advertising genre and
do nothing so much as to collectively conjure up the blithely destructive
countenance of Mercury, demi-god of communications with the gods and patron
saint of lies. Precisely, the sort of double-edged figure often featured
in Barminski's work.
In these recent paintings, like his work overall, there appear to be several
different tensions at play. In many of the paintings, he is content to create
a kind of distressed painterly, anti-consumer icon that acts like the dark
side of their monolithic advertising counterpart. The image of a glass bottle,
in the familiar flanged style of Classic Coke, is isolated and painted onto
a field of smudged whites. The logo on the bottle reads CRAP, and this colors
our view of the broken liquid in the bottle with an unexpected visceral
twist.
A modified cross, harkening back to that of the Chevrolet logo, likewise
appears on an off-white field that is embellished with Barminski's characteristic
micro-relief cracking, peeling and layering of enamel paint and gesso. A
symmetrical bisection of the chevron allowes Barminski to sub-divide the
word into phonetic parts. 'Cön' with the German umlaute appears in
the right half; 'Su' appears in the left; and an isolated M and E, done
in different typographical fonts, complete the word. Consume, come sue me,
con su me and consommé are just a few of the words which this play
begins to generate, and as the consumer you have every right to ask for
more.
In other paintings the artist generates rebus-like puzzles. These works
are more subtlely Iayered, and the viewer is encouraged to range more widely
with free association. In the midst of it all, there is ample use of illustration
and ad images, especially from the forties and fifties. They are melded
together with words and word fragments as well as abstract patterns. Double-chinned
warriors from the high school football teams, gooey slices of fruit covered
cake, cents signs from the cash register, fortune cookies and less legible
image fragments float around the letters KILL in two works. Small clusters
of inscribed text and barely visible embossing provide an inkling of the
artists' intent. More than anything else, that intent seems to be related
to unveiling the extraordinarily high number of events we can link to the
gruesome rebus. From serial killers to the toxic waste nova contained in
mom's apple pie, the indictments are for the viewer alone to determine.
Barminski's newest work turns to near abstraction for inspiration. It incorporates
materials such as fabric old lace which is embedded into the painted surface
much like the gesso and enamel plaint. This use of an overtly formal pictorial
element, unrelated to a critique of consumer culture, and the introduction
of visual patterning such as stripes and bars, opens new horizons for Barminski
to explore.
To date, his critique has primarily centered on the unbelievable glut of
stupid, goofy and downright devious things consumer culture promulgates.
In the course of this very active skepticism, Barminski has been quite a
producer himself. Maybe now, assisted by the fractal awareness that he has
indirectly acquired in order to guide him in the organization of his CD-ROM
projects, he has found something of value in the wasteland of popular culture.
