New York
Ziehersmith
Widely acclaimed in Los Angeles-oriented group shows in the U.S., Europe, Russia, and Israel, Allison Schulnik is a good example of a young artist coming out of the CalArts experimental animation program. Her third New York show, which combined sculpture, painting, and animation video, took on the atmosphere of a dark and threatening circus sideshow, the works all bound together by an utterly individual, somewhat funky West Coast sensibility. At the center was the large-scale projection Mound, a 4.5-minute videotape of dozens of animated clay figures accompanied by the 1969 British pop tune “It’s Raining Today,” sung by transplanted American musician Scott Walker. Choreographed like a ballet with archetypal fairy-tale characters assembling and decomposing before our eyes, the film includes a heartbreaking passage involving what appear to be three scarecrows in tutus dancing in a chorus line. In the background, piles of sludge rise into individually sculpted figures, complete with moving phalluses, both flaccid and rigid. With scowling faces and frantically waving limbs, they rush toward exhausted collapse and return to primordial lumps. …see the entire review in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
