Flash Forward @ SPACES Gallery 2/13 SPACES' Flash Forward exhibition has bright spots but fails as curatorial project. Today's gallery climate and world economy have forced many commercial galleries into compromising core-values in order sustain operations; selling T-shirts, postcards and advertising the all too common "international art competition" -- where artist's pay a small entry fee (usually $30- $40) in hopes to gain some glimpse of exposure in a commercial art gallery setting as well as pump-up their exhibition resume. Too often the focus of these competitions are too solely generate operating revenue for the gallery and in the end become a hodge-podge of stylistic pursuits ranging from the visually arresting to the very banal and offering very few bright spots. This is the feeling one gets from Flash Forward.

Flash Forward is described, as an exhibition of some of the best works by newly emerging artists of Northeast Ohio. It's a dizzying exhibition where the amount of work included in the show easily overwhelms the space -- like a high-school science fair or student art exhibition/salon. One gets the sense that the curators either had too many hands in the pot during the installation or simply focused too much time and energy on the concept of the exhibition, rather than worrying about the final product itself.

In some case works are stacked one on top of another, almost to the wall (Ann Hanaran, Kelly Urquhart/Jamie Kennedy) and in some cases the presentation of the artist unfortunately is treated almost like an aside to the exhibition, including Yukimo Guto and Peter Luckner, whose work ironically is featured prominently for all of the exhibition’s advertising and press materials.

Not to say that Flash Forward is without highlights.

Lorri Ott’s brightly colored poured-resin objects, created in response to her experience of the bleak Northeast Ohio landscape, are a showstopper whose conceptual underpinnings are as interesting as their final output. In a fundamental sense, Ott’s objects are sculptural in nature, the resin is folded, formed, bent as it protrudes from (or is captured by) the surface of the gallery wall. Objects such as canvas and muslin protrude from holes created in the surface further enhance the three-dimesionality of the objects. In another sense Ott’s work functions extremely well as painting.

Like often is the case in painting, Ott’s colors are all hand-mixed from a limited color palette, but have a punch to them that make them appear as if they were freshly painted and still appear wet. The horizontal stripes of the larger works appear as if they were painted by one well-placed brush stroke and each stripe seems to bleed into one another as if they were painted separately, one after another and left to dry in space. There is energy in each piece that does not exist in almost any other work in the exhibition.

In and of themselves, each work gives the viewers a sense of some unknown wind source blowing or rippling behind them. A sense that if someone where to pull away the little pieces of tape surrounding the larger works (an wonderfully subtle addition) they would simply blow away and swirl out the door, only to be caught again in some obstacle of our Cleveland landscape. Maybe that’s Ott’s biggest statement. Like so many artists here, did she choose to stay in Northeast Ohio, or is she caught, waiting to be set free?

Dragana Crnjak’s work is really the only other standout in exhibition, not only in size and intelligence but also in the ephemeral. The only truly site-specific work in the exhibition, Crnjak creates ellipses of heavy-black charcoal hand drawn directly onto the gallery wall, which are then smeared in a downward direction, giving the viewer a wonderful sense of movement and metaphor. Are these ellipses slow moving nomadic villages as the artist suggests? Did the artist deliberately smear her charcoal renderings or are we seeing the last vestiges of these shapes as they begin to spread across the gallery? Or are they slowly deteriorating under the weight of gravity? Pulled down by a sense of impending doom? Will they return to dust, later to swept up from the gallery floor or will they be covered up by paint when the exhibition closes, forever entombed in the gallery. The effect is stunning, but looking at the catalog images one wonders what could have been. If say, Crnjak was given far more room in the gallery, rather than seemingly shoved into a corner.

The show organizers would have done better to switch wall spaces of Ms. Crnjak’s work with that of Ms. Kreiger's, whose large portraits, while ambitious in size, show an immaturity that does not match the space that they occupy in the exhibition.

While Ms Ott and Ms. Crnjak’s works are the most forward thinking visually, Glen Ratusnik’s etchings maybe looking forward to our impending future. Barren buildings, streets and parking lots give an ominous sense to where American cites may be heading. There is simplicity of perspective here; both in the topographic line work in some of the etchings and in an atmospheric perspective created by the arbitrary marks that seem to exist in space. Whether this is intentional or a by-product of Ratusnik’s process is unknown, but all together it either gives the feeling of a great depression that may lie ahead for all of us or Ratusnik has read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road one to many times. Hopefully it is the later.

Unfortunately, Flash Forward as far too many low points, including Jon Cotterman’s glass constructions of “everyday icons” that fall well short of any statement on pop-culture and modern society the artist would suggest or Mike Jones’ video installations that seem to try to create emotional content out of subject matter rather than of actual substance.

On a whole, the lack of focus on installation and presentation leave Flash Forward as a forgettable exhibition, but it does contain bright spots that are definitely worth seeing. The shows importance may lie in the fact that so few venues will take chances on emerging local talent. Compared to other cities, Cleveland has embarrassingly little financial support of the arts and commercial spaces receive minimal support in the Plain Dealer, most likely due to gross incompetence. The city has lost far too many quality commercial exhibition spaces the last couple years (RAW, exit, etc.) and it may be the legacy of the non-profit spaces to pick up where certain commercial galleries off.

From Cool Cleveland contributor W.H. Bonney clevelandartcriticATyahoo.com
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