Painting Tracts

It may seem retro to criticize suburbia. You might ask yourself: Hasn't that point already been made? That conformity and excessive consumption of resources, not to mention enforcement of pink canopy beds for girls and race-car themed bedrooms for boys is totally evil? On the one hand, yes, John Waters exists, so you could be forgiven for thinking that most of these problems haven't shriveled on their own. But at Douglas Schneider's "Suburban Birthday Party," the painter points out that on the other hand, no, the 'burbs are still raging along repressedly, whether in the form of crumbling relics of gas stations of yore, or of the monolithic donut emporiums that still dominate the landscape. He also uses a mixture of disaster imagery and abstract expressionism, very sad, very odd, very pleasing. The overall effect is unlike, and yet like, the suburbs themselves.
May 7-June 27, 2009