George Peck
MARIANNE BOESKY
535 West 22 Street
New York NY 10011
September 6 - October
4, 2003
By JOHN
REED
Barnaby Furnas Tingling
Couple 4 2003
watercolor and urethane on paper, 34 x 46 inches
cover image (October 3, 2003) Rock Concert (The Walkmen) 2003
watercolor on paper, 15 x 21 inches
Courtesy Marianne Boesky, New York
Guns blazing, Barnaby Furnas
returns for his second solo show at Marianne Boesky, offering, in three
dozen works on paper, a spectacle of guts, glory, and an occasional
orgy.
In colors that have become
archetypes in today's print media, Furnas obsesses (and rightfully so)
on issues of political paranoia, personal excess, and a resolute, national
impulse to self-destruct. Shady operatives lurk in the tall reeds; they
twirl their guns. Bacchanals play out on the world stage; we can hardly
differentiate the orgy from the bloodbath. Battle scenes are extravaganzas
of Homeric proportions; to die the good death is to be "Blown To
Bits." Vanity and violence are the sexual currency of our lives.
Rock concerts are convocations of blood cults. We shadowbox, shirtless,
on the beach.
With the present global
situation-terrorism, rampant religiosity-equations of violence=ecstasy
become particularly compelling. The unsettling relationship between
fundamentalism and war/murder is, as they say, right on target. Furnas's
false prophets, however, are not bunkered deep in deserts. They are
rock stars and, surprisingly to many, U.S. politicians. Honest Abe,
the most lauded of all U.S. presidents, earns the ire of Furnas's brush.
As Lincoln is worshipped by faceless masses, the questions form: And
what about the civil war? Was all that bloodshed really necessary? Perhaps,
suggests Furnas, that is a part of the American psyche: the will to
unnecessary war. Lincoln, in the second to last work in the show, shoots
off his own head. In the final image of the show, Furnas gives us, "Killing
the Dead," a depiction, not so much of the dead being killed, as
the dead being maimed. This, to Furnas, is the advent of history: the
celebration of the wars and murders we accept.
A version of this review
appeared in Time Out New York September 29, 2003
