Joseph Smolinski at Mixed Greens

Joseph Smolinski’s cleverly titled exhibition After the Fall that is currently on display at Mixed Greens steps in at a socially responsible moment to imagine how solar panels and tree-shaped wind turbines could be seamlessly integrated with the natural landscape. This happens to come on the heels of Mayor Bloomberg’s August proposal for more renewable energy in New York City that emphasized developing a wind farm infrastructure. Lackadaisical consideration of wind energy has persisted for generations with obvious appeal for even the most neophyte environmentalists, usually tempered by grumblings about a compromised skyline. Instead of being outraged by the social set that could turn a blind eye to the commonplace aesthetic lack of America’s urban planning while refusing to consider the turbine field as a source of hypnotic solice, Joseph Smolinski graciously approaches the issue as an opportunity to create beauty. Who says that turbines have to look the way they always have? In urban settings, why not design windmills that are integrated into buildings or, even better, that function as joyous displays of design? Taking the cue from this exhibition’s reminder that artists often best imagine the solutions that invigorate political and scientific efforts, I imagine a glorious team of industrial designers and 70's-style land artists commissioned to create a spectacle of wind-harnesses worth traveling to.
The best part of the exhibition is discovering on the way out that Joseph's tree has actually been realized. Thanks to funding from Mixed Greens and MASS MoCA you can view a video of the tree in operation as well as stills of its construction.

Play Versus Power

The cartoonish “Grotesques” of the Uffizi Gallery ceiling countlessly configure super-beasts with person-beasts and joyous quatrefoil fill-in-the-blanks. After a waltz through the Illuminations exhibition in the basement level it is easy to see the connection between this decorative style and the even earlier monastic book illustrations, where there is freedom to ‘doodle’ within the regulating logic of symmetry. Following the fire of 1762 the West Wing corridor was restored according to the tastes of that moment, which suggest that the shift from playful explorations of a bestial self to moralized representations of specific elite historical figures was synchronous by degrees with the entrenchment of illusionistic devices, while the mythological motifs that continued with the most vigor did so as appropriated vehicles of state virility. As a result of the fact that play did not benefit from the support of the state and was at worst usurped by it, the generational enrichment of a mythic self was largely abandoned in comparison to the resounding climax that emblems of power such as the story of David did reach.
Perhaps it is this dropping off point that explains the contemporary interest in gothic awkwardness. The project of inventing a history that ‘continued’ to metaphorically reorganize the human form invigorates the production of mythologies that were not stunted by and do not bear the weight of religious or political epochs and are thereby free to simply play.