Walking into White Flag during the installation of Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Lefcourt’s solo exhibit, one is overcome by the sea of beige composite wood that seems to fill every discernable space in the gallery. As you tiptoe around the space, careful not to step on the pristine items, it quickly becomes difficult to parse the art from what might simply be a box in which the artwork was shipped. For example, a giant “painting” leans against a wall: in the space inside the frame where one expects a painted image, the viewer finds more beige composite wood. Lefcourt creates “paintings” that no longer distinguish between painting and frame. Since everything is made of the same material, each object is at once real and solid, a mere version or simulacrum of something else. As a result of these slippages, the objects remove all conventional notions of differential materials. While the art objects created by Lefcourt correspond to the physical world, they all become emblems for Lefcourt’s demystification of the art-making process: on a certain level, it’s all mimesis. Lefcourt’s symbolic works reveal the social game of looking at, selling and making art through theatrical installations of mass-produced objects.
Daniel Lefcourt: Mockup will open with a reception from 6-8 PM on Thursday, April 19 and will remain on view until May 26, 2012. For more information on this exhibit and other upcoming events at White Flag, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org
(4/18/12 by Edo Rosenblith, Intern)
Blueprint (held by dutiful intern Edo Rosenblith) for WFP’s upcoming show Daniel Lefcourt: Mockup, opening next Thursday, April 19, 6-8 PM.
