RE TYPED
VERSION
John LeKay
Cohen
Hail hail rockrawl, rough as you can take it. But behind this
explosive panoply of potential talent, this sheer rawness, one has to
ponder if the political implications of the project have been fully
exploited. The answer to this probably yes, but in that prob-a-bly
(pronouncing slowly its constituent syllables) are all the doubt,
enjoyable, fecund doubts that this show provoked. If a hardcore
posse of New York kids are currently playing out their Bad Boy
fantasies, LeKay seems the most convincing, his past credentials as
strung-out enfant terrible conjoined with the full frisson of his
rightly notorious social behavior cannot help but tempt. Braving
the shady terrain of "artist-as-personality", one might ponder if the
actual production of cultural artifacts is more hindrance than blessing.
To be editor of an underground publication entitled Pig and to be
generally lethal at parties is perhaps sufficient.
But LeKay's assemblages are sufficiently bad in a good way, or vice
versa, that if they do not exactly stake out new territory they at least
refreshingly kick around some of the idees recus of the last
decade, establishing the possibility of an Arte more Povera than anyone
might have imagined.
LeKay's rickety constructions, built out of filthy, abandoned street
junk, have deliberately provocative titles suggesting a rich array of
sociopolitical taboos; These Colors Don't Run, Lazyboy Jesus or the
Separation of Church and State would imply some hard hitting apercus
beyond the blue chip circuit of compliance.
If the results are tragic in the best possible sense, pathological
constructions freighted with pathos, bathos, and urban fear, their human
energy paradoxically short circuits any real cathartic effect.
There is scant spark to action or even cause for anecdotal tenor of
these large-scale vignettes. As if Martin Kippenberger had started
to work in a Lower East Side soup kitchen, and become all the more
cynical and cool in the process. LeKay's large talents do not yet
seem to be fully united with their intentions, the visceral brilliance
of his materials and sense of composition require just the smallest
shove in the right direction to solidify into a genuine, lacerating
critique that will prove impossible to ignore.
Adrian Dannatt
