| NEW YORK, CRITICS PICK MUNRO GALLOWAY MURRAY GUY GALLERY 453 West 17th Street February 16 - March 23 The heavy, sweet aroma of innocence is perhaps not the first thing one expects to come wafting down the hall from the open entrance of a gallery, but Munro Galloway's current exhibition, "The Floating World," is a truly mystical experience with all the trimmings. The fragrance in question emanates from three portly, laughing Buddhas, each one surrounded with fresh lotus petals. Cast in resin and inflated with an admixture of assorted cure-alls, including Tylenol, ecstasy, ginseng, and vitamin C, Everything Goes Up in Smoke, 2001, encapsulates the chemical nausea of the culture clash between East and West. The gallery also dances with reflections cast by a Buddha-shaped disco ball, while heaven is imagined as an expanse of greeting-card lilacs encrusted with crystalline stars. The painted figures of a girl and boy offer up prayers and flowers, but the sincerity of their intentions is doubtful. Galloway's vision of contemporary versions of faux-transcendentalism is itself of its time - that is to say skewed by Hollywood movies and rave culture, and beset by a skittish skepticism Michael Wilson |
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| Shangri-La, 2002 |