Friday, May 1, 2009

Exhibit review: FOCUS: Rosson Crow at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

By Patricia Mora of THE Magazine

Dallas-born artist Rosson Crow, whose work is on exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth until May 17, has been described as a platinum-haired stunner who currently resides in the glamorous environs of Los Angeles. She's known for choosing her attire with discriminating care and, consequently, one might find her work rather alarming by contrast. It's highly masculine and fraught with an animated and spectacular, even lurid, attentiveness to bloody carcasses.

For those accustomed to the still life paintings of, say, dead game that emanated from Europe in the 1600s, this is quite another genre. It's a study in execution and destruction. Ms. Crow takes as her point of departure mythic events that culminate in depictions akin to ruined and cavernous abattoirs. But before you pause and decline a trip to The Modern, I suggest you gut up and go. Bucket of Blood Saloon Destroyed by San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 is just one painting in this small but brilliant selection of pieces that make it worth your time and effort. If you've never seen magnesium burn, this is your hot chance. Ms. Crow shows us a splitting chandelier that's marvelous in its exploding incandescence. It throws into "focus" deconstructed architectural segments that epitomize decadent and complex notions of masculinity run amok. The panel has enough dripping red to suggest a crime scene -- and perhaps that's the point. There's a historical violence of unbridled ferocity that's being addressed. And, put simply, it's bloody wicked.

It's been pointed out that Ms. Crow shares a lineage that reaches back to Carracci and then moves forward to link up with the contemporaneous Francis Bacon. And I suspect those touchstones offer ingress into her work. However, they are not needed for a "straight-on" encounter with the surface of her canvases. No prep work is necessary. She'll invite you into the indelicate world of rifle shops and butcher shops. No invitation needed.

However, things do become more interesting when you learn that Queens Butcher Shop, 1910 refers to a found black-and-white photograph of an actual shop in Queens, New York. And it's been also underscored that "Queens" can operate as a double entendre for slang vernacular denoting gay bars and decadent, even seductive, spaces in American culture that are frequently overlooked or deliberately ignored. The painting is raw and sexy in a primal ritual-initiation kind of way. It dares you to enter.

The twenty-six year-old artist recently wrote, "America has always had its own raunchy brand of decadence." Indeed, her paintings pay homage to our romantic notions of nostalgia and patriotism by underscoring its shadow side, reflecting upon the excessive nature of our compulsions. If this is gore, give me more.

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THE MAGAZINE DFW is a visually oriented, free monthly periodical with a focus on the contemporary visual and performing arts scene in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area.

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