"I'm Not Going to Be Here For Long" by Kineko Ivic



"Kingfisher Projects Packs a Punch at Mother Nature" NYArts Magazine Vol.9 (July/August 2004) N.7/8 pg.59.



            No mundane display of landscape, the work in "Fuck Mother Nature" ushered viewers into the longstanding dialogue art has had with issues of man vs. nature in a confrontational, aggressive and clever way. Check out the Press Release intro from Oscar Wilde: "Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place." Ouch! It makes art sound so...Revolutionary! Well, the show wasn't all that but here is some work I found interesting:
            What first caught my attention were Andy Crosses "Exploitation of Exploration" pieces. Conservative on the surface, they being representational depictions in ink of late 19th century P.T. Barnum spectacles or Melvillian era sea expeditions.
            On closer inspection I saw a material usage not possible in those bygone eras.The line qualtiy gave ode to the old Ôquill and ink in the bottle' method of illustrating. But the pieces were actually ball point pen executions. The grounds were made of light blue styrofoam defying expectations that they were something heavy, difficultly wrought, and permanent.
            The way they speak on man's control of the animal kingdom using the style of a time when such ideas were not criminalized by PETA or Greenpeace or trustfundafarians in trucker caps and white belts made a succinct statement about then vs. now environmental politics and animal rights.
            The work of Fran Holstrom was inavoidable; not only due to it's size (measuring 6 ft. x 6ft.the piece may as well have been "The Raft of the Medusa" by Gericault in King Fisher's modest apartment space), but also because of it's betrayal of imagery in favor of text for it's title and subject "I Am An Island." In this statement the artist is not necessarily against nature but associates with it metaphorically. Nevertheless she describes herself as separate from her environment. No wonder she's an island though. The overlapping waves of text under the lime green title/subject describe a "Sea of Shit". Nature here is nothing more than words referring to smelly brown waste; she wanting nothing more than to be clean, green text separate from it.
            The work of Angelina Gualdoni, whose sensitively executed decaying buildings in peaceful landscapes show the inevitability of man's conquest of nature, made a nice showing too. With her carefully orchestrated, beautifully colored landscapes Angelina communicates natures' most feared quality, entropy, which always wins out in the end.
            Mike McFalls' android cat dissections, and Kineko Ivics, diarrea pile people also made strong addtitions to a show whose in your face theme was supported by subtle reminders that a dynamic tension between humans and the worldly womb from which they are born will always exist.