Tentacles and dandelions: it’s a grand joke on yesterday’s bad art. With a cartoonist’s sensibility, Sam Parker’s Untitled (below) transforms an old still life into a man-eating hydra. But what makes the piece work is the faded blue ink and that antique style patterning. Details like that remind you that, yes, this was once hanging in grandma’s kitchen.
The piece serves as a nice, abbreviated summary of MINT Gallery’s latest group show, Home Vandal Network. It was like the inventory from some bizarre yard sale: doctored photographs, Jesus Christ relaxing at a strip club, and Fing Fang Foom. Some other pieces were a little less inspired; there were a few too many reproductions of Leonardo’s Last Supper.
Many of the pictures retain their original, gaudy frames. It was a good choice, especially for pieces like Thom Foolery’s homage to Dr. Seuss. Riffing somewhere between Green Eggs and Ham and Rococo artist Jean Fragonard, his redesigned paintings are good for a chuckle. But would you eat them in a house?
One of the strongest entries was called Help Me & My Pregnant Wife, submitted by Mark Parker (no relation to Sam). I was a little terrified. A seated female examines herself in the mirror with an open tabloid in her lap. Gazing with dark, self-critical eyes, an unexpected ghost image stares back. What could be an allusion to the legend of Bloody Mary becomes a kind of modern age vanitas.
