Group shows usually are messy affairs, aggregations of artistic and curatorial idiosyncrasies without theme or point of view. In the right hands, however, an invitational or juried show can take a snapshot of an art scene, local or global. The latest Whitney Biennial, recently opened in Manhattan, reportedly trumpets the return of antinomian sentiment after a couple of years of deferential and eye-pleasing marketability, for instance.
But in any local art scene, or even statewide, group shows generally do little more than expose a variety of competent work, and sometimes even that’s asking too much. Fortunately, the two group shows bracketing Downtown Las Vegas meet this minimum standard, at least, but you’ll search them in vain for any clues about the state of art in the state of Nevada.
Perhaps the best that can be said about the Contemporary Arts Collective’s 17th Annual Juried Art Exhibition is, "Seventeenth? Really?" It is something of an accomplishment, having bested the odds in a town that has ground several similar artists’ groups into the olive haze that shrouds the Valley. Unfortunately, the show is at best inchoate and at times scalp-scratchingly unpleasant—despite its jurors’ admitted bias toward "strong formal design and graphic qualities."
Sad to say, Nevada Now II, at the Reed Whipple Cultural Center Gallery, offers little more. The second installment of works by winners of Nevada Arts Council grants has the benefit of a larger space and a more tightly controlled rubric. Each artist is represented by several pieces, and the viewer gets a chance to examine contexts. This certainly helps to make Nevada Now II the more engaging and satisfying of the two shows. It also helps that these artists come from other parts of Nevada—well, Reno, although one ex-Fallonite is featured—and that their work has been vetted by the grant-making process. This is not necessarily the most telling index of quality, but it has its value.
Still, both shows have that air of art-making in the provinces, marked by a high degree of earnestness and a distinct paucity of compelling vision. In both cases, photography fills the void. Given the state’s ruggedly lovely landscape and its principal city’s peculiarities, it’s little surprise that Nevada nurtures good photography. One wall of Nevada Now II pairs Las Vegan Cara Cole’s frank and fearless diptychs from her The Sky Above the Mud Below series with the eerily fascinating, large-format prints of Reno resident Phillippe Mazaud. Bringing these pieces to Southern Nevada might be the show’s greatest blessing.
At the CAC, a small black-and-white print by Amber Tyrell won Best in Show for photography. In its enigmatic way, it says more about Las Vegas than many more obvious views. Slightly out-of-focus, a woman’s calves and high heels reflect in the floor, which distends the limbs and takes up more than half the picture. One foot is partly lifted, ready to leave, ready to dance or maybe just being coy; could be closing time at the Moulin Rouge, 1964, or at Light, last week. Or something else entirely.
But video is the unexpected highlight of the CAC show. Jorge Catoni and KD Matheson’s best-of-show effort in this category is both mesmerizing and disquieting. A continually morphing blob of inky black resolves into faces and figures for moments, with a face at one point seeming to dissolve into a skull. It is a worthy successor to early surrealist experiments with film, and a reminder that there’s more to do with moving images than showing people walking and talking. And, well, blowing up things.
The posted statement by the CAC show’s jurors, Jeanne Voltura and Lisa Stamanis, also affirms an affinity for "pretty straightforward thinking" and "no hidden agendas." This sounds reasonable, until you reflect that spectacular art sometimes results from convoluted or even contradictory thoughts, and that obvious agendas are not always superior to the opaque ones.
Both jurors are local artists who work for the city’s Cultural Affairs division. Usually, shows like this are judged by an outsider, but it’s not as if Stamanis and Voltura are patently biased. In fact, they judiciously toss some new names into the mix of usual suspects. But their statement has a manifesto aspect that makes you wonder what they might have turned away. Stamanis and Voltura are talented artists and administrators, and it’s doubtful they have any "hidden agendas" of their own, but this exhibition needs an outside juror.
All this said, both shows are worth a visit, if only for the prospecting—sifting a few nuggets from the slurry. Mary Warner’s fanciful florals, with their feel of outsized sketches in a botanist’s notebook, are always striking, and the trio in Nevada Now II is particularly rewarding. And stalwarts such as painters Wendy Kveck and Marty Walsh and potter Teresa Testa help redeem the CAC show. But here’s hoping No. 18 is smaller, more focused and juried by strangers.