Arts Reviews

Construction Site

For being in such an offbeat space, "Construction SiteÓ is one heck of a show. Large, ambitious sculptures and site-specific installations make it worthwhile to seek out this temporary venue, located on the ground floor of AMLI Downtown (a new loft building near Second and Lavaca). Find the large rooms behind the parking garage, and there you will be astounded.

The works featured are by Katalin Hausel, Young-Min Kang, Barna Kantor, and Lynn Richardson, four foreigners currently living in Austin. Given the title, one might anticipate heaps of rough material; however, this expectation would be incorrect. The artworks are cleanly and decisively produced and are in a scale that requires a sizable venue.

Young-Min Kang's large sculptures incorporate distorted photographic portraits, integrating them in such a way that the viewer's perception is brought to attention. In Slice of a Day, a giant triangular form is rotated slowly on its axis, like the hand of a clock. Applied to the surface is a distorted image of a face, which does not become clear unless the viewer stands in front of the object at a precise point. Barna Kantor has a group of sculptural artworks that also use motion in producing various optical effects. Coming out of a film background, the artist has an interest in expanding the boundaries of cinema. The most filmlike of Kantor's works is Retinal Massage I in which images of a couple of moving metal screens have been projected on the wall. The shifting patterns produce perceptually unsettling moire effects.

Lynn Richardson has an interest in the interface between the mechanical and biological. Her fascinating installation Air Distribution Center calls to mind the chamber full of pods in the movie Alien, but these are clearly mechanical forms, joined to walls of boxes by a long flexible tube.

Katalin Hausel's breathtaking installation Drift, off in its own separate room, has a text by Noam Chomsky painted on the floor in a maze-like configuration. Periodically a single letter in the text is popped up and made into a plywood bench. The text, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals,Ó a meaningful choice in the context of current political events, is well-nigh impossible to read in its entirety, producing confusion and fatigue. That's part of the point the artist is making – the fatigue of trying to understand the deluge of information surrounding us, the exaggerated importance of certain out-of-context fragments. But the piece is not fatiguing at all if one doesn't try to follow along the lines exactly – they are false boundaries, easily transcended. This artwork is beautiful, above and apart from all meaning.

These folks are raising the bar. They clearly take themselves and their art seriously – it's really great to see. If you love contemporary, noncommercial art, then you need to put up with the hassle of finding the site and go.

Closing reception: Sat., Sept. 25, 8pm-3am (scheduled to coincide with Cinematexas closing party). 201 Lavaca, 477-0017.