Brooklyn Fire Proof News
ARTNET.com: Dateline Brooklyn: Laying Doggo (review)
posted August 19, 2004
Dateline Brooklyn
by Stephen Maine
Doldrums, schmoldrums—Brooklyn galleries sizzle throughout the summer. Half a dozen venues have put serious thought into their off-season offerings, with a little help from artists, freelance curators and their friends.
Brooklyn Fire Proof, which opened a few years ago in a raw space on Richardson Street on the northwestern cusp of Williamsburg, recently enjoyed a makeover and is looking downright spiffy (though it’s still a little hard to find). The current show is “Laying Doggo,” organized by Yale MFA candidate Ann Toebbe and mainly featuring the work of other Yalies.
One exception is Ohio State alumna Stacy Fisher, whose work shares with the show’s other participants an interest in the examination of mundane, archetypal imagery—the generic, threadbare visual vocabulary of popular culture – but avoids trafficking in cliché and wrings some genuine emotion from the combination of generic motifs. Most of the pieces in this seven-artist show are priced for the entry-level collector, in the $500 to $2,500 range.
BFP founder and director Burr Dodd has no problem ceding control to outside curators; indeed, he seems delighted that his little corner of the world has taken on a life of its own. Next up for the gallery is “August,” organized by artist Dan Kopp, followed in September by “Intimacy,” assembled by the ubiquitous writer and curator David Gibson.
Fisher’s work was seen last spring in “Up and Off the Wall,” at the nonprofit Dumbo Arts Center. DAC has a generous space, a helpful staff, and a bit of difficulty mounting truly convincing shows. There are a couple of stand-outs in every exhibition, but frequently the curatorial conceit is fleshed out with mediocre work distinguished by nothing more than traits that happen to support it. In such a thesis-driven selection, the tail wags the dog.
STEPHEN MAINE is an artist and writer who lives in Brooklyn.
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/maine/maine8-19-04.asp