I did not know Aurora Pellizzi or her work before the show from March 3-8 in the 7th floor lobby. I did not go to the opening, did not talk to anyone about the show before seeing it. Hanging are a few large print-outs with multiple digital photo collages featuring Ms. Pellizzi (I assume) crudely inserted into touristy photographs of real and absurd locations, often in multiple. Looking at the show's postcard, I see the title is "Alter Ego, ό Mirame y No Me Toques".
The immediate impression these collages give is equivalent to the tourist photos they parody: I'm sure they are funny to whoever took them. They look like jokes, they are jokes, what else could they be? Are they commenting on the tourist trade or just pointing at it with an obnoxious grin and not saying anything? Aurora in Damien Hirst's diamond-studded skull makes me think of art as tourism, but my thought stops there. The images are rotated and fit on the pages to save room, not to be presented, which brings up the possibility that they're not about tourism or cultural disregard, maybe the subject is the medium. False naïveté has never been charming and when it is so obviously false, when the pixelated cut and paste with her curtains still there between her arm and body is printed large-format and high quality on a big glossy piece of paper, it just looks lazy. Anyway, not knowing how to use Photoshop is not yet social commentary.
So, they're jokes. Sometimes she wears a funny dress, or makes a funny face, or has a cake on her head like a funny hat. I can appreciate humor in art, but these have no punch-line, they are ironic without an end to meet. Do I create that end? These are purposeless images, escaped e-mail attachments, kidding between friends. As an artist, am I allowed to disregard these images as unsuccessful and uninteresting, or must I create a comfortable excuse to leave them on before I can admit appreciative dislike?
Will Schneider-White
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