Lucid Culture

University of Oregon professor Salter’s sendup of consumer culture, currently on display at the Jeff Bailey Gallery through February 9, is spot-on, even if it has all the subtlety of a billboard on fire (an animated video of which is part of the exhibit). But Salter’s scathing critique is leavened with considerable humor. In the center of the room stands a colossus, a fourteen-foot robot assembled completely from white styrofoam used in packing boxes. Along the gallery’s right wall are an assembly of smooth, faceless, white porcelain figures, each about 18 inches tall, and they’d be taller if each wasn’t slumped over, beaten, completely defeated. A couple of them sport logos, as if wearing a t-shirt. One has an array of green leaves – flaunting his/her environmental correctness? – except that one of the leaves has fallen off.

On the back wall are paintings based on simple geometric shapes. There’s the view of a house, the sidewalk in the foreground scarred with cracks, and another showing an empty plastic lawn chair, microphone and amplifier posed in front of another house. There’s also the painting on which the burning billboard video is based. All of it is very effective and equally amusing. We need more art like this. The Jeff Bailey Gallery is at 511 West 25th St., #207 on the second floor, between 10th and 11th Avenues.

And while you’re over in Chelsea, stop by McKenzie Fine Art for their Geometric Abstraction exhibit, also running through February 9. Chris Gallagher’s two viscerally affecting pieces are the star of this show. The first, Ad Infinitum sets freehand parallel lines at an angle, their blue, green and orange blending with the offwhites and yellows of the background, inducing vertigo in the process. There’s also a smaller, similar painting, Tilt, less arresting but still full of striking contrasts, its lines practically dancing off its plain background. McKenzie Fine Art is also at 511 W 25th St.