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April 19-26, 2201 Issue
No. 291
Will Cotton
Mary Boone Gallery, through May 5
When Will Cotton first showed his
candyland panoramas last year, my response was split between
a chocoholic's eureka! And an art critic's huh? His Paintings
of cakes and ice cream seemed a return to early Audry Flack and
Wayne Thiebaud. Hard on the heels of a show by another Mary Boone
artist, Damien Loeb, Cotton's work seemed to be riding a wave
of '70s-style photorealist nostalgia. But in his latest exhibition
of four large and lush paintings, Cotton begins to dwell, like
a Dutch still-life painter, on the allegorical power of his sugary
surfaces. His methods are the same- he constricts tableaux of
cakes and candy in his studio, then paints from the models- only
now, his arrangements are more sophisticated, more subtextual.
In Red Pop Ravine, vertical peaks
of Popsicles and ice cream cones tower over a valley of pink
whipped cream and eggs. The majestic view suggests that Cotton
is ironically sweetening Ansel Adam's vision of nature to fit
the hi-cal, fat-cat myopia of America today. On the other hand,
Chocolate Thaw shows a trailer-park-like structure built of white
chocolate with dark chocolate bar windows. While still yummy,
Thaw also suggests a sort of gothic, Hansel and Gretel undertone
of trouble lurking behind the chocolate- of things too sweet
to be true.
Flood, a lovely pink candy house
caught in a raging flow of syrup, is the highlight of the show.
Dramatically backlit ice cream bars, covered in multicolored
sprinkles, serve as half-submerged trees. Again, one happily
devours the Good Humor scenery, yet the allusions to natural
disaster stress that not everything in life is sunshine and lollipops.
We all come down from out sugar highs eventually, and all of
our frozen solid goodies doth melt. It is this new layer of meaning
that elevates Cotton's art beyond the simple and saccharine.
-Robert Mahoney
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WILL COTTON "RED
POP RAVINE" 2001, OIL ON LINEN,
116.5" x 72"
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