Selections from Dada Motel commemorates an installation and performance-art event in Reno’s historic Hotel El Cortez held last summer. Because much of the work in Selections uses digital media and contemporary styles, the show’s curator, Chad Sorg, says this exhibit has almost nothing to do with the original Dada movement. However, the show may be more Dadaesque than Sorg suspects, at least if you define Dada as a state of mind rather than a style.
Dada was a cultural movement created in 1916 by artists and writers fed up with grown-ups sending young men to war for reasons that rang ever more hollow. If war was considered rational, Dada would be irrational. Since the art of the era was serious and cerebral (think cubism), Dada would be playful and absurd. To this day it is a clarion call to reject grown-up seriousness
“Midnight in Vegas,” S.K. James’ 15-foot digital panorama, is a melding of the “absurd and the apocalyptic,” described by the artist as a “party on the brink of disaster.” Whereas Dadaists would snip out printed images and compose them to comic or rhetorical effect, James samples digital images and Photoshops them to comic and rhetorical effect. Fremont Street is the setting for an assortment of tourists, soldiers in camouflage fatigues and businessmen wearing gas masks. The roiling sun on the horizon appears closer than it should be, as its flares silhouette figures balanced on a slender precipice.
Many artists associated with Dada became surrealists who explored the subconscious to create a new reality. John Molezzo’s digital panorama “The Disintegration of Las Vegas” depicts a world where unrelated fragments of life combine to form a dream-like desert landscape, which includes heavily outfitted soldiers, discarded mannequins, early motels and a rusting ’51 Nash. A young woman pointing an Uzi at the viewer is ironically positioned just left of the Las Vegas welcome sign.
Although Dada died as a movement in 1922, it opened the door for the return of the remnants of older art (the human figure, narrative, social commentary)—that is, it prefigured postmodernism, which describes Franz Szony’s large composite photographs “The Old World” and “The New World.” Intending to critique the old way and offer a new paradigm, Szony uses symbolically potent images and models in theatrical poses to create uber-kitsch works that personify his hopes and dreams.
Printmaker Nolan Preece embodies the whimsical and fantastic elements of Dada. “School of Fishmutations” is a witty send-up of an Escher tessellation, where the interlocking fish forms break free into worm-like squiggles. In “Mutations From the Sea,” fictitious sea creatures leave a path of exuberant doodles across the page.
Several artists make merry by assembling unrelated items into three-dimensional constructions. Kai Prescher mimics the work of artists like Marcel Duchamp, who was associated with Dada. “Trom Bonehead” is constructed of wood, steel and found objects—most prominently a trombone. This type of work no longer has the shock value it had in 1916, but it has a nostalgic appeal.
Dean Burton’s minimal and abstract “Linear Series” photographs couldn’t be more different in spirit. Burton’s serene and meditative work is so removed from the spirit of Dada that I was surprised to learn he has something in common with Kurt Schwitters, the best-known of the many Dada collage artists. Both use trash in their work. Schwitters, a compulsive saver, used bus tickets, labels and newspaper fragments to compose rigorous collages. Burton packs the detritus of his studio—test prints, cardboard and packing material—into dense horizontal layers, which he scans or photographs. The result is so subtly colored and textured I was entranced.
Candace Nicol’s printmaking, painting and digital photography are another kind of fusion. What appear to be paintings of male nudes on ceramic tiles are really digital prints mounted on boards and coated with terra-cotta colored resins and glazes. “Chad for Dada Las Vegas” is a homage to the show’s curator and participating artist.
When he’s not posing nude, Sorg is painting. My favorite is “Prototractor Series #1” done in collaboration with Jim Zlokovich. Sprayed and painted in sweeping strokes of rust and silver metallic colors, the combination of something old and something shiny and new makes it a good metaphor for this show.
Selections from Dada Motel
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Through March 28 Marjorie Barrick Museum, UNLV
895-3381