Crop Rotation (Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY)

Neil Campbell. Bloodline, 2007. Acrylic on wall

Ferdinand Kriwet. Rundscheiben, 1960–63 Offset print, 10-parts

Marc Bijl. Urban Modernism (Lozenge with 4 lines and grey) Stenciled and borrowed , just to survive, 2007. Stencil and spraypaint graffiti

Commissariat: Clarissa Dalrymple
Avec Marc Bijl, Neil Campbell, Jeroen Jongeleen, KRIWET, Jochen Lempert, Marlo Pascual, Jeffrey Wells

Within the work of each artist in this group show is an impetus toward constantly reusable procedures, which becomes a contained art practice in and of itself. Marc Bijl, Jeroen Jongeleen, and Neil Campbell make much of their work directly onto the wall. Bijl and Jongeleen also make constructions from prosaic material such as wood and plaster board or in the case of Jongeleen transferring a wall work onto canvas. Marlo Pascual makes tableaux from retrieved photographs, re-assigning form and role to selected images. Ferdinand Kriwet traduces television events such as the 1974 election in America and the first moon walk. He uses graphic process in the composition of discrete works. Jochen Lempert is a zoologist. In the banks of photographs exhibited there is an intense focus on the birds and animals combined. Jeffrey Wells's examination of sensory perception is constantly re-employed throughout his art practice. In this case the nature of a solid corner is betrayed with a video of laser light.

Ken Johnson:
Organized by the independent curator Clarissa Dalrymple, “Crop Rotation” is perplexing, but theatrically engaging. The words “walk” and “talk” printed in yellow on black on a length of plastic stuck to the floor — a piece first made in 1970 by Ferdinand Kriwet — lead to a room where a rickety wooden structure by Marc Bijl holds up three horizontal mirrors reflecting words spray-painted in reverse on the wall. They read, “The construction of life is at present in the power of facts.” In a corner of the main gallery two enormous black circles painted on each wall by Neil Campbell give the momentarily thrilling illusion of openings into infinite space. But a poetic tableau by Marlo Pascual involving old photographs under glass, a seashell, a large rock, electric lights, an antique telephone and a much enlarged page from Walker Percy’s novel “The Moviegoer” is portentously heavy-handed. Don’t miss Jeffrey Wells’s video projection of an almost invisible line wavering in one corner of the gallery or Mr. Kriwet’s video montage of television clips from the 1972 presidential race between Richard M. Nixon and George McGovern.