Art in Brief
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
JUSTIN LIEBERMAN: Agency (Open House)
Zach Feuer Gallery
Justin Lieberman’s current exhibition at Zach Feuer exudes an aura of the avant-garde. Even though his strategies have become art world convention, they are still effective at wagging a tongue at the art establishment. The exhibit is full of appropriated images, objects, and text. Quotation trumps formalism. Mr. Lieberman attempts to convert the power of advertising and kitsch into something subversive.
The artist pokes fun at the opportunism rampant in the contemporary art world. In “For Successful Living” (2004) he bluntly tells us that he is a “manipulative careerist sell-out” who “uses people” and “tosses them away like garbage.”
The alteration or hijacking of familiar imagery in “National Peanut Board” (2006), copies of six identical advertisements that were ubiquitous throughout the city during the past few years, with the original text — “Why pay a therapist to get in touch with your inner child?” — altered by blocks of dripping paint to read “Why pay a rapist to touch your child?” successfully transforms sentimental pablum into a faintly accusatory one-liner.
Several transparencies placed in light boxes borrow text, graphics, and imagery from advertisements in order to subvert, exaggerate, or critique the advertising process. “Lexapro” (2006) consists of a transparency depicting the artist with a beard hunched over in a wheelchair perched on a train track while a train races toward him. The words “DON’T LET IT COME TO THIS” are printed above the action. This gallows humor satirizes the typical content found in some advertisements.
The installation “Conference Room” (2006) consists of a roughhewn wood conference table splattered with polyurethane with six chairs placed around it. A poster-size photograph hanging behind it depicts the artist sticking his tongue out and pulling up his shirt to uncover a plastic baby clumsily taped to his stomach. The poster reads “Where do you get your ideas?” Mr. Lieberman’s work suggests that both good art and effective advertising require ideas that stick in the mind. He reminds us that no matter how smart-alecky or nihilistic an art work is, it is still for sale.
Until February 24 (530 W. 24th St., between 10th and 11th avenues, 212-989-7720).
