RE-TYPED VERSION
WITH PHOTOS
November 1993
John LeKay at Cohen
Gallery. Madison ave.
A participant in a half-dozen trendy group shows
over the past two years, John LeKay uses found objects to mirror
social degradation, with varying degrees of outrageousness.
The five highly theatrical tableaux of furniture, found objects and
sound effects which he exhibited in his two consecutive solo shows
at Cohen Gallery eschewed his previous sexual gimmickry, effectively
blending humor and horror.
The problem with this work is intrinsic to
found-object work; the sculptor risks becoming nothing more than a
manipulator of objects already freighted with their own social
meanings. LeKay does not entirely rise above this liability.
But, to his credit, he does manage to create a truly edgy
atmosphere, with his insistent references to bodily damage and
lower-middle-class despair insinuating themselves uncomfortably
under the viewer's skin.
The title piece of the show,
The Separation of
Church and State, merges low-rent dinginess and Christian
iconography. Placed on a ratty gray rug, the work features a
wheelchair set atop a bed as the centerpiece of a horizontal cross
made out of planks. The ends of the cross are defined by
various dilapidated household appliances -- a battered kitchen sink,
an electric fan, and an old TV perched on a toilet bowl (with a
headless Madonna added on for good measure). The wheelchair
holds an electric guitar, crowned with a Mickey Mouse balloon.
In Lazyboy Jesus, LeKay places a recliner atop a shopping
cart as a makeshift throne for a portrait of Jesus. The whole
ensemble is bedecked by palm fronds, Christmas lights and a Day-Glo
hula-hoop halo.
LeKay's ode to homelessness,
Zipperdeedudazipperdeeday, is centered on another throne --an
armchair holding a broken stereo speaker, which plays a tape of two
bums talking and singing the song alluded to in the title. A
jury-rigged shelter made of poles and plastic, and a circular
barrier of tattered industrial insulation together mark the limits
of this humble kingdom, whose only subject is a giant Pink Panther
doll stuffed into the cagelike wire bedframe that makes up the back
of the shelter.
These Colors Don't Run is at once an
antimonument to war and fa functioning deathtrap. It features
a wooden plank leading up through barbed wire to a bucket of oil, a
walker topped with a dildo, an American flag, a pail of water in
which an apparently live electrical extension cord is submerged, a
gnarl of brown packing tape and a tape deck blaring Jimi Hendrix.
The raw rock music extends the work wonderfully, as does the syrupy
Christmas muzak in Lazyboy Jesus.
In LeKay's world, damage is omnipresent, every
balance is precarious, and every stab at transcendence reeks of
kitsch and desperation. For all its calculated melodrama, his
work captures something akin to genuine anguish.
--George Melrod
