EXHIBITED WORKS
Tall Gallery, Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound

Painting as Something and as the Opposite of Something
by Nilo Ilarde

July 9 - Aug. 2, 2010

On view at the Tall Gallery is Nilo Ilarde’s “Painting as Something and as the Opposite of Something.” As one of the country’s eminent curators, Ilarde rotates the infinite possibilities of scale and directly engages with the gallery’s enormous space. His found objects (a flattened car, an undulating wall of emptied paint tubes) are monuments of waste and destruction, renegotiating their newfound purpose now that they are situated within the transfiguring walls of a gallery. As if playing with the classical notions of integrity and proportion, the artist positions his artworks that they achieve a deft and uncanny lyricism: the canvas floor of a boxing ring is now vertical and pendulous; the cut-out piece from a wall with the accompanying tools achieves the mathematical lines of Mondrian; while the car, although smashed and irreparable (with broken glass and bits of metal and paint beneath it) is now affixed to the wall, like a symmetrical insect. Though the question it raises is not new (What makes art art?), the exhibit relishes in the complications that it engenders, at the same time delivering a clean punch to gut for its brazen humor, unapologetic discourse and maximalist strain.

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