: SELECTED PRESS / ESSAYS

WASHINGTON POST
Decatur: An Intermittent Turn-On
By Jessica Dawson
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page C05

With-it art aficionados have kept an eye on Decatur Blue, the seven-member artist collective, since the group moved three years ago into its modest digs above a Northwest Washington body shop. There the artists presented exhibitions of their own work along with local, national and international up-and-comers, plus a few earsplitting bands. Despite losing that space last June, the group has continued to generate a scene, curating shows locally and participating in solo and group shows around town. Right now, the crew has mounted "BaBa," which hangs in its final weekend at Signal 66.

"BaBa" (the name, slang for a Colombian drug cartel, christened Decatur Blue's brand-new Bogota gallery) is Decatur Blue's first show as a group outside its old space. Each member is represented: Ryan Hackett produced a trio of wall-hung Plexiglas boxes filled with steam (the fog machine that juiced them was dead upon our arrival, though) and an illuminated Plexiglas floor piece filled with small white balls. Jose Ruiz turned out a sassy "Over the Sofa Painting," complete with couch, as well as three painted car windshields. Stoff Smulson shot near-abstract color photographs of the moon. Brian Balderston built two eight-foot-long rectangular boxes; one is carpeted in Astroturf, the other holds a chair. Champ Taylor painted a wall piece and shot a video (it wouldn't play during our visit). Gabriel Martinez did an installation. And Javier Cuellar submitted a Web site.

Right now, Decatur Blue stands at a turning point. Its potential is enormous. Its artists have proved themselves on a small scale. But do they have what it takes to make the leap to lasting impact, not to mention fame?

To help answer those questions, I invited two local luminaries -- Chip Richardson and Robin Rose -- to tour the show. Both men are not only respected painters but also close observers of young artists in Washington for decades. Richardson, 49, an associate professor of painting and drawing at the University of Maryland, instructed Ruiz and Hackett as undergraduates in the late 1990s. Abstract painter Rose, 56, has shown locally and internationally since the mid-1970s. Their critique encompassed both the works on view and advice on how to further a career:

Robin Rose: These guys are the Young Turks, right? They look much more together than stuff I'd seen before. These people are really trying to step out now.

Chip Richardson: I'm excited about twenty-somethings getting out and kicking it a bit. It's happening everywhere. The art world is driven much more by youth than when we were this age. Other than Frank Stella or Brice Marden, there weren't that many artists who blew up in their twenties. Now there are. I don't know if that's a function of the artist or the container for the artist. The galleries in New York and in Washington seem much more adventurous than they ever were.

RR: I could see this show in Brazil. I could see it in Helsinki. They all have concepts and are really driving at stuff. That said, let's talk about my pet peeve when I come to a gallery: You better know that your stuff is gonna turn on. And you better make sure that the people who are in charge of turning it on know how to do it. Signal 66 or the Whitney, it's still the same thing. When you plug it in, it better work.

CR: These guys have this really interesting convergence of high and low tech. If you look at Jose [Ruiz]'s digital stuff, it's electronic but it's adamantly funky electronic. He'll use digital shots of static to generate things that he'll then bring into painting. Basically painting is pretty low-tech these days. But he's putting it on sexy car windshields.

RR: Ryan Hackett has a nuance that I find interesting. For the Young Turk to like the concept of the sublime is interesting because it's been rejected outright by so many of them. It harkens back to [Clement] Greenberg and [Mark] Rothko. This is a different presentation of it, but it's not so far away from it, actually.

CR: Nuance is something viewers and artists barely take the time to work with anymore. Nobody wants to look for as long as it takes for nuance to rise up and become powerful.

RR: That's a major issue right now in the world. Where do we turn once things have gotten so fast that we can't physically go any faster?

Jessica Dawson: Are these Balderston constructions so similar to everyday objects that we don't slow down to look at them? We moved by them pretty quickly.

CR: They are close to everyday objects. One engages you the way a shower does -- the size, the scale -- it's a shower you can putt in. You want to step inside. The other one, you know you can't sit in that funny truncated chair. So you're kept outside. You see it more as a set piece.

RR: It responds to the fact that we're all immensely affected by the media, especially film. Like this [Gabriel Martinez installation], with "Useless Memory" written here, and these art books and this recycling bin antithetically composed. It asks one of the real questions artists are asking: Where is art going to fit as we move forward? Is it going to be strictly a spectacle and entertain large amounts of people? That's what most museums want.

CR: It's the whole idea of recycling. But this piece seems a little didactic to me. One of the biggest traps in the art world is glibness. Gabriel is not [Belgian conceptualist] Marcel Broodthaers. His piece does weave a little web of thought about social and aesthetic and political consciousness. But he has to establish a context over time.

RR: Now each one of these guys has got to take a really deep breath and get rigorous. They've got to be their own worst critic. I give them one piece of advice: When you get ready to take this stuff out on the road, make sure to document this installation and document it well. Because mythology is 90 percent of what's going on right now. The deeper your myth, the better.