Hanging on the wall of The Approach was a small painting of a Modern interior.
Close inspection revealed it to be a picture of the gallery itself (The
Approach, No. 1, 1997). It depicts, however, a rather dowdy-looking show,
nothing like the one in which this painting was included. Although the work
is by Andrew Grassie, it was not surprising that it was in a show by Dave
Muller, an artist who makes exhibitions about exhibitions. Part of Muller’s
practice has always been to include the work of his friends at his "Three
Day Weekends", and to paint posters for their shows. This exhibition
included such a poster, but instead of advertising the forthcoming show of
a someone else it announced Muller’s next appearance at Murray Guy in
New York.
Murray Guy once exhibited Matthew Higgs’ work I Wish I Could Draw
(1999), one of the series of frontispieces from art books. At The Approach,
Muller reproduced several different versions of Higgs’ image in watercolor.
Comparing brushwork and accuracy, the viewer was pushed to consider ‘quality’.
They were hung beside four mock posters, imaginary adverts for Andy Warhol’s
1986 show of ‘Oxidation Paintings’ at Gagosian (He Could Sell
Snowballs to…,2000). However, no such advertisement ever existed,
and in place of mottled copper surfaces, Muller supplied an image often seen
in LA car bumpers: the cartoon character Calvin, pissing onto the floor with
his back to the viewer, but looking over his shoulder with a grin. When you
remember that Warhol’s work was a rereading of Pollock’s macho gestures
(the ultimate piss-take) the force of this work appears second-hand. Muller’s
two-sided A Sculpture whose Front Resembles its Back (2000), meanwhile,
displays on its ‘back’ side a framer’s stamp, hanging wire
and gallery label printed with the work’s title, date and medium. Its
‘front’ side is a watercolor of what is described on the ‘back’.
Making a piece like this, 44 years after Jasper Johns’ Canvas
(1956), suggests that a work of art’s status is longer secured by the
artist but by gallerist and framer. I was reminded of a work by David Scher
that made me laugh out loud - a small can with a label that read ‘Artist’s
Tuna’. The question was, was it shit?
Elsewhere in the show, the tone shifted. With tender affection, Muller revisited
‘institutional critique’, and while lamenting the lost politics
of a radical period, his new works suggest fresh starts, while hinting at
an ambivalent position towards the possibility of contemporary critique. At
a recent art fair, Muller glimpsed a pile of crates containing various pole
works by Andre Cadere. Cadere insisted that these colorful objects could be
displayed anywhere, in and outside of art spaces. Now they were packaged away
from view. Here, with Backstage at the Hamburger Kunstverein, Late
June 1996 (2000), Muller recreated the scene: a number of crates lay ion
the floor, each attached with a label and mock Polaroid (another watercolor
sketch) of its contents. While the work acknowledges the art world’s
effortless packaging of critique, it presents itself not so much as a tonic
as a new sculpture.
This dynamic was also evident at the show’s entrance. Four cords (Untitled,
2000) announced the closure of the exhibition at The Approach, referring
back to Robert Barry’s ‘shut exhibition’ announcements from
1969. Each of the four cards is in a different font (one of which is used
by The Approach). A second look at the plaques revealed that the announced
dates of closure were merely the Monday to Wednesday periods when The Approach
is shut anyway.
If this show flirted with nostalgia, Muller’s exhibition at Murray Guy,
‘Spatial’, reveled in it. In a completely unexpected turn Muller
transformed the gallery walls into a nocturnal skyscape, covering them with
rectangular paper sheets, painted black and sprayed or flicked with white
paint. Amid the stars some sheets showed night creatures or spaceships, rendered
with beautiful and childlike simplicity. Though the work referenced a painterly
tradition from Pollock to Olitski, nostalgia was not so much directed to an
art-historical past as to childhood, to nocturnal dreams and sci-fi. The space
age now seemed like another fantasy of the late 1960s - one fondly remembered.
