Ron Grenko
By Fred Camper
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Both series are a bit unsettling. Yet there’s perhaps some ironic humor here as well: Grenko appears to be tweaking the aesthetic “purity” of traditional minimalism, in which geometrical forms seem designed to exclude the daily world, by using blood and murder weapons. Both series seem unbalanced, however; it’s hard for such simple forms to hold their own against the tabloidish content. One can see this problem clearly by contrasting these works with Grenko’s two “covered canvas” pieces, which make gentle jokes on the subject of aesthetic purity without resorting to blood.
One is a diptych of two 14-by-14-inch canvases; the other is a single 28-by-56-inch canvas. In both, white canvases are covered with white canvas cloth on the front and sides; laces attached to the cloths are tied together, holding the front coverings to the side ones. Here Grenko achieves a precise balance between conflicting possibilities. There is a contrast between the purity of color-field paintings and the rather theatrical coverings. But whereas in the blood paintings the theatrical, ornate frames seem to heighten the luridness of the blood, here the closed “curtains” gently make fun of artistic pretense, reminding one of the story of the emperor’s new clothes–commonly alluded to in arguments that the “less is more” aesthetic is an excuse for a put-on. At the same time the works seem honestly self-abnegating: these nothings wrapped in nothing leave the viewer questioning what art is, what an artist does, and how much the viewer should add to the experience. Humor and emptiness are balanced precisely enough to leave the viewer free to reach his own conclusions.
Litzenberger made six other works in the show using welding techniques, though not in the conventional way of bonding two surfaces together. In Squirt a very thin pole, perhaps nine feet tall, rises from a cube on the floor. Litzenberger melted a welding rod and dripped it in a careful pattern to create a stack of rings, somewhat irregular in width, with an occasional bead adhering to the side. The weight of the rod exactly equals the weight of the small cube, Litzenberger told me. This choice partly helps him “figure out where to stop,” but he also likes the idea of “two different masses–a very architectural man-made form, and coming out of it a naturalistic excretion.” Indeed, the rings of Squirt are a bit like irregular tree rings, not surprising since they result from the movements of the artist’s hand. As one’s eyes move from ring to ring, one relives the obsessive repetition involved in the creation of the piece, becoming almost a cofabricator. The rod and the small block on the floor are like a tree growing out of a Miesian skyscraper; knowing that the weights are equal heightens the irony suggested by their very different shapes.
