A Little Obsessed

Lawrence Rinder curated at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (he assembled the 2002 Whitney Biennial). He was dean of graduate studies at California College of the Arts, and currently directs the Berkeley Art Museum. So when Rinder promises a “surprise musical guest” at an art show he’s curating, you can be sure the result will be something deeply peculiar and pleasing. This is the man, after all, who introduced Gogol Bordello to the Whitney. Tonight, he offers up visual pleasures in the show “At Home,” which features Dieter Roth, Franklin Williams, Ajit Chauhan, and Brian Chippendale. The four artists have little in common formally, but each is obsessed with a kind of tantric repetition. Roth, who died in 1998, created compulsively across genres: artists’ books, sound recordings, sculptures, assemblages, jewelry. Williams, a student at CCA in the 1960s and now an influential professor there, floods his drawings and paintings with patterns, some of which flit across figures who have been given otherworldly appendages. Chauhan’s intricate drawings on paper look like something a Mayan god might doodle on a Pee Chee folder. And Chippendale is a comic artist whose style was once described as “almost a little too enthusiastic.” He’s also a musician who’s performed with Björk. Let the surprise guest rumors begin (no, we don’t seriously think it’ll be Björk).
Sept. 25-Oct. 25, 2008