The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

Rachel Harrison’s traveling survey that originated at Bard College in 2009 was outstandingly good, and this gallery show makes a worthy, change-of-pace follow-up. As always, her sculptures combine the handmade and the ready-made, with the handmade predominating this time. 

The main element in several new pieces is a lumpy, faceted column of Styrofoam and cement painted, somewhat haphazardly, in rainbow colors. In a laconically sardonic way that Ms. Harrison has made her own, these forms seem to acknowledge the reascendancy of abstraction on the art market, while suggesting that a once-vital Modernist mode is badly in need of cleaning and pepping up. This is where ready-made components come in. Several columns are supplemented by the addition of housecleaning hardware (a bucket, a carpet sweeper, a Hoover vacuum cleaner) and one has a large poison-pink plastic container of the protein supplement Syntha-6 perched on top.

Will any of this really help the Modernist enterprise? A set of 20 colored pencil drawings leaves the matter in doubt. Most quote familiar images painted by long-gone masters like de Kooning and Picasso, who were power generators in their day. But in Ms. Harrison’s drawing these old stars are dwarfed by a new one: Amy Winehouse, with her messy, anarchic energies, beyond-help passions and sculptural coiffure. To knock art with wit and persistence, as Ms. Harrison does, is to in some way be hooked on it. Such was the spirit that motivated  certain artists she seems to admire, like Marcel Duchamp and Paul Thek, and that propels the seriously funny sculpture in this show. Constructive criticism is one term for it; tough love is another.