| MUNRO GALLOWAY, "The Floating World" Murray Guy, through Mar 23 The West’s fascination with Eastern culture seems very much in the air right now, but that obsession has long been shared by everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Wu Tang Clan. Munro Galloway’s own interest is clear from the title of his show, "The Floating World," which refers to Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints from the Edo period (1615-1868). In ukiyo-e, the "floating world" means the world of distraction—of circuses and theater and, especially, of beautiful courtesans. Galloway’s work, however, suggests that a similar universe of gratification is more likely reached through a method as Western as it is Eastern: drugs. The show consists of five paintings and two sculptures. Three of the canvases, titled Heaven, form a suite of sparkly panels reflecting light off crystal-encrusted surfaces. The remaining pair form a sort of yin-yang: Idoru shows a pretty Asian girl emerging from a lotus flower; Siddhartha, meanwhile, is a young man of similarly indistinct Asian heritage offering a lotus blossom. Shangri-la, a Buddha-shaped disco ball, sends an uneven cascade of pinpricked lights across the walls, but the pièce de résistance is Everything goes up in smoke, a trio of Buddha sculptures sitting on the floor among orchid flowers. Slightly pinkish in hue, the Buddhas seem to be carved out of some exotic jade, actually, they’re cast from a compound of crushed-up resin, incense, caffeine, Claritin, codeine, Ecstasy, ginseng, Tylenol, vitamin C and Wellbutrin. Ask someone in the gallery to light up a stick of incense under one of the sculptures, and the whole installation cranks up a notch, with smoke pouring out of the laughing Buddha’s mouth. Suggesting the odd combustion that occurs when people from different cultures have unlimited access to each other via music, film or the Internet, Galloway offers what might be called a critical view - or perhaps simply another version - of East-meets-West, one that’s just as variegated as the idea itself. -Martha Schwendener |
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| Munro Galloway, "The Floating World" (installation view), 2002 |