It has been more than a decade since the Halsey McKay Gallery opened its doors with a show of Patrick Brennan's work. Each subsequent show (we are up to five) has brought its own sense of momentousness, an event in the making.
"The Cage" is no different. He has taken over the first floor of the East Hampton exhibition space with paintings, sculptures, and an installation that aims to confound viewers' expectations in order to arrive at a greater understanding of the work.
The cage of the title refers to a structure made of wooden pallets and industrial lattice screening. Its presence in the room is confrontational, sheltering, and confining all at once. Outside of it, the lava lamps placed on the top of the wall facing the front of the gallery act like beacons -- both a warning of its presence in the gallery as a potential hazard to be avoided, like a lighthouse warning ships at sea, and an enticing sign of groovy welcome.
The lattice is spray-painted in a loopy combination of spring-like pastels with some deeper tones and Day-Glo colors thrown in the mix. The pallets are painted in white or different hues that have been pulled from the color choices for the lattice. The structure that the artist has formed, as interesting as it is visually on its own, is not merely an edifice. He has made it a gallery within the gallery, using its "walls" as additional surfaces to place two-dimensional artworks on both its inside and exterior.
One might draw the conclusion from looking at "The Cage" from the outside that more artworks would hang on the adjacent white gallery wall that the structure seems to be protecting. Instead, the artist makes a different choice, hanging pieces on only the walls he has made.
The artwork, including a video piece set between the two wooden layers of the pallets, is as unpredictable as the rest of the installation. There are tiny paintings, paintings mounted on paintings, and references to spiderwebs, landscapes, and seascapes, with some hash marks thrown in the mix.
Because the exterior walls are set up in front of a recess, the actual space that the cage creates is much larger than would be assumed upon approach. It makes the blank wall behind it feel much more blank, even as the pallet walls dance with imagery and precious discoveries. A lone sculpture made of foam, paper, spray paint, and Popsicle sticks on a pedestal, which stands as sentry in front of the opening of "The Cage," is the only artwork not part of the installation that interacts with it directly. Its presence functions to underline the void created by the blank wall, rather than mitigate it.
Nearby is another sculpture bearing the same name as the first and using the same mediums. Both are called "New Relics" and they adopt an additive approach. The first is tall and narrow and sparely colored. Paper is applied to a narrow base rising more than two feet high, so that the corners stick out and act like thorns. There are vague references to a flower on top, but it is one that has wilted or gone to seed, whereas the Popsicle sticks at the sculpture's base, in their vibrant star shape, seem more credible as a suggestion of a bloom.
The other piece is more richly colored and more balanced in its proportions. It, too, looks like a flower, in tones of pink and gray.
Placed around the gallery are more wall-mounted mixed-media works. The wall pieces are rarely just paintings. There are protrusions and other raised areas formed by Popsicle sticks, frames within the frame, and collaged elements. There is even a work titled "Stacked," in case the visuals aren't obvious enough to grasp. At the very least, there are always two mediums in play, as the artist uses both crayon and acrylic in the canvases he doesn't otherwise embellish.
Many of the visual elements in these works, while overlaid with plenty of other themes, seem to be inspired by the dissolving shapes and curvy mutations of the lava lamps in "The Cage." There is also apparent in many of them an underlying weather theme, with suns, clouds, raindrops, moons, and maybe even fireworks in a dark night sky.
It's a lot to take in and even more to ponder, but the experience is invigorating and worth a look or two. The show, which is concurrent with a group show of three female artists (Larissa Lockshin, Salome Lopes, and Anne Vieux) titled "Metallurgy" and organized by Rebecca Poarch, will close on March 31.
