CHICAGO — Curator Danny Orendorff’s 19-artist exhibition All Good Things Become Wild and Free at Carthage College’s H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art located in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a textually rich, difficult-to-describe arrangement. It is a forest plucked from the sewage system of Candyland-meets-Edward-Gorey’s-subconscious, populated by wild, overgrown glitter flowers, anus-like ruptures from neon-spray-painted, inflated, amorphous objects that look like inverted couch cushions from a giant’s living room. Also occupying this crazy world are claymation figures that continuously morph into each other. They make Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas look like Blue’s Clues.
This hodgepodge exhibition is loosely based on the idea of exploring pretty much anything that could be labeled non-normative and unconventional. Its other purpose is to send a not-so-subtle and completely awesome “f-you” to the elitist, capital-”A” art world by exploring work that would probably be considered “lesser than” by art purists. For some examples of these neglected investigations, see the crafted object, any type of ambiguously political art, and the relationship between craft and affect.
Read the full story on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/59780/all-good-things-become-wild-and-free-h-f-johnson-gallery/
