"Boy, Oh Boy!"
Fredric Snitzer. Miami
Bearing as its title the typically American expression “Boy, Oh Boy!”, generally used to convey surprise, pleasure, enthusiasm or a reaction to something that is shocking, the Miami gallery Fredric Snitzer presented its summer group show, which explores a “macho/masculine” position throughout a wide spectrum ranging from the macho-macho, the peacock, and the gay man or woman, to childhood and the boy-girl relationship. The participating artists – many of them not associated to the exploration of the theme proposed by the exhibition – are Endre Aalrust, Zack Balber, Hernan Bas, Timothy Buwalda, Alex Flemming, Francie Bishop Good, Christian Holstad, Natalya Laskis, María Martínez-Cañas, Jonathan Meese, Sabelo Mlangeni, Rashaad Newsome, Paul P, Michael Vásquez, Bert Rodríguez, Christian Schoeler, Dash Snow, Diego Singh, James Everett Stanley, Alex Sweet and Kehinde Wiley.
Among the work by Hispanic artists represented in the show, special mention may be made of the large-format paintings of Michael Vásquez, who regularly explores urban culture and the motivations and internal dynamics of neighborhood gangs for someone who, as in his case, grew up without a paternal figure by his side, and these compensated the need for respect, pride, protection and loyalty. Also, Vásquez executes these works in a pictorial language that translates street graffiti into an artistic technique employing color in the manner of Op Art and Pointillism. María Martínez-Cañas presents two works belonging to a series of photographs on canvas that were included in the solo show she presented the past year at the Tower of Freedom, where she highlights her physical resemblance to her father by merging a photo of each through the use of the Photoshop program. Hernan Bas shows one of his highly sought-after oil paint- ings on linen in a genuine bet on artistic conservation and tran- scendence; his favorite subject matter, fantasy, finds its ideal counterpoint in a careful pictorial technique.
There are two works by the conceptual artist Bert Rodríguez: a childhood photograph printed in large format on Lambda paper, in which he is featured dressed as a cowboy and simulating to commit suicide with a toy gun, and another photograph from the series “Buy replace and return”, a project in which the artist buys a whole lot of frames and replaces the sample images they con- tain with self-portrait pictures, later to return the frames to the shop. The Argentine artist Diego Singh, in turn, participates with a huge drawing in graphite entitled The Land of the Young, in which he displays his usual fantastic imagery and the two eyes he includes in almost all of his works, and which appear on this occasion as a sort of tiara on the forehead.
