Between States
Derek Eller Gallery
Press Release:
In October I flew down to Tennessee for a friend’s wedding, then got a rental to drive farther south. As a New Yorker without a car, merging onto the grid of US highways feels like exhilarating exploration: a mini-episode in the ultimate, aimless American road-trip. Running amok on the Northern continent, deciding by wit and will, reassuring your ability to survive without the bureaucratic safety net, peeling out and slamming into being in the right place at the right time, the fantasy that reality is changeable: it’s what keeps us alive. We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Summerville, GA, and we followed that by combing through Tupperware bins atop aisles of folding tables in a dusty parking lot swap meet. Hunting for discarded, mis-marketed artifacts of long forgotten American desires has an addictive quality, like any slot machine, or candy crush. You never know when the payload will arrive.
The destination for that day was Paradise Garden, created by Howard Finster in the 1960s. It seemed like nature was slowly winning the battle against artistic vision (the Master had departed over 17 years ago), which made me feel like I was visiting the Empire just beyond the height of glory, on the descent of the bell curve. Video of Finster on the Johnny Carson Show revealed that he had strolled the earth with complete confidence, upstaging the late night comedian with unwavering rantings about God. When you’re convinced by an idea larger than yourself there’s no stopping you. The gift shop attendant circled mirror house on the xeroxed map of the grounds: “That’s a highlight,” he said. Fifteen minutes later I stood in the mirror house, an Insider staring out at the Outsider’s Utopia made of junk: bottle caps, cast metal toys, broken pistols, ceramic shards pressed into cement now overgrown with vines. It was a hand-made fun house on stilts with faux foreign décor; the entire structure swayed in the breeze as I looked through the window at the weeping willows in front of the rolling hills beyond a kissing bridge. My view was blocked by a white picket fence. Or at least that’s how I think I remember it.
-Melissa Brown, 2018
Press:
New York Times, Martha Schwendener
Art Observed, Valentina Di Liscia
California Common Law, 2018; Flashe, acrylic and oil on dibond; 78 in x 59 in
El Pueblito, 2017; Flashe, acrylic and oil on aluminum panel, 40 in x 44 in
i25, 2018; Flashe, acrylic and oil on dibond, 54 in x 72 in
Swamp, 2018; Flashe, acrylic and oil on dibond; 59 in x 78 in
Tom and Di’s Rustic Inn; 2017; Flashe, acrylic and oil on aluminum panel; 45 in x 27 in
Finsters Mirror House, 2017; Flashe, acrylic and oil on aluminum panel; 60 in x 40 in
Double Blind, 2018; Flashe, acrylic and oil on dibond,