Wherein our fearless editors enter the Dickless Realm, wondering:
Doesn’t anyone want to see naked men besides us?
Does anyone besides us feel bothered by so many images of submissive women in one place?
Are women really the only ones who ever get naked?

The work here is not all bad- though much of it feels unresolved both as art-work and as manifest understanding of the human body. On the curatorial front- we appreciate Danielle’s idea of creating an overall vision from the work received in a call, and respect her openness to artists’ interpretation of the assigned theme. We also feel a great deal of respect for the range of media included in Roney’s roster- although if the relatively weak clay sculpture work is included for the sake of variety alone, this is going too far.

Once again we are reviewing a large group show. Reflecting on Conversations with the Contemporary Figure, a few comments on the physical arrangement of the work seem important. We enjoyed the pairing of Martha Whittington’s & Brandy Handelman’s work in the same room, with the surprising recurrence of bird imagery and the tension between freedom and bondage
suggested in both pieces.

As a whole-space installation, we were taken with the sparseness and integrity of Kerry Phillips and Mary Babcock's Converse, a.k.a the rocking chair/typewriter ribbon room. Without the hubbub of an opening night crowd, we found the installation’s ambient soundtrack distracting and annoying. Maybe the point of the piece was connection within chaos? But the twin amplified rocking chairs’ simpler message of heightened sensory and psychic awareness of the other feels more poetic to us.

In contrast to these well-planned and elegant spaces, the main ED space felt fragmented
through too many smallish works & the enormous back room did no one’s work any great
service. In particular, Meshakai Wolf’s video piece, situated somewhat inexplicably in a reflective sauna and weight loss tent, was an example of lyrical work made unbearable by circumstance.
Projected large on one of the main room’s walls, the piece would have sung.

Now for the moment everyone’s been waiting for: Ratsalad’s picks & pans!

In all of the work we liked, the figure is not taken completely literally. Martha Whittington's Untitled, Kerry Phillips and Mary Babcock's Converse, Sasha Igenue Patton’s Untitled from the La Mer Series are all examples of work which approach the body both as itself and as vessel for larger truths. The paraffin bird-hands in Martha’s piece make a child’s shadow-game into a meditation on impermanence. Sasha’s photographs evoke the feminine as emptiness, and pair the openness of the sky with the open offering of the body. Converse suggests through its amplified chair-rhythms the rocking of bodies making love.

We (on a polite day) were “less enthusiastic” about Jedediah Morfit’s severed heads, Eric Landes’ framed targets (next time, don’t pimp out your readymades in fancy-fancy frames! some traditions should be upheld!), William Sapp’s video stills with accompanying clay sculpture as well as Brandy Worsfold’s photographs with bloody subtext. Some grounds for these dislikes?

Kristin finds Jedediah Morfit’s heads explicitly derivative of Bruce Nauman, but at least Bruce made wild dayglo severed heads.
William Sapp: did you mean for this work to seem like stills from a snuff movie, or was that unconscious? Because snuff movies ARE illegal, and we at Ratsalad would not want to see you get into trouble.
Brandy Worsfold: your photographs and stories feel full of artschool angst, and seem to represent a first & vigorous wrestling with complex, troubling subject matter. We’ve all experienced the horror of discovering there is such a thing as clitoridectomy. It’s hard enough to find that thing, let alone contemplate having to lose it. Makes us angry too, girlfriend! In any case, keep going: working through rage and cliché will bring you to the specific core of what moves you.

Actually this is true of all of the work we express dislike for at any time. We realize there is
always something that made the artist proceed, and we respect the process and the
people who move through it. However, we will address finished work as we see it, in the context of other work, and according to how we perceive its coherence of communication or feeling.

The Christopher Scarsborough paintings are add-ons to the dislike list for Julie. She feels that though by passages they are beautifully painted, they are also too easy in their depiction of tossed-off people, the waylaid rubbish of a TV-obsessed, overmedicated society. Kristin sees her point, but likes the literally darker painting I Take Medication to Keep it Manageable. She feels there is a tension in Scarsborough’s work between awareness & caring about the deaths he portrays, and a disturbing current of voyeuristic irony. There is great potential subject matter here about our relationship to death, its meaninglessness and its poignant sadness. But Scarsborough should be careful walking in this landscape to not lose sight of the human aspect of the body.

In short we’re interested in work that connects the microcosm & macrocosm, that respects us as viewers, and that invites us to bring our own voices to interpretation. We do not generally feel moved by work that is gratuitously shocking, aggressive in its communication, aimed at alienation, or exploitative of the titillation of violence.

There are many examples of both types of work in this show.

Hey, you can't please everybody & at least we are very upfront about our biases. We at Ratsalad want to challenge ourselves as well as the rest of the art world to make better work, whether you agree or disagree with us. Make us work harder on what we have to say!

And next time, please remember that some of us like to see naked men as well as women.