Alley Culture
November 3 through November 25, 2006

As much as the name Alley Culture is a description of its actual location (yes, it is in an alley and hosts cultural events), it’s also quite apt in summing up its purpose. It’s a place for the community in which to showcase culture not on corporate logo lit streets of commerce, but from people of every walk of life, sitting around a fire as has been done since we first could create a fire, and engaging in dialogue about meaning.

To this end the gallery has always been about breaking down barriers between people, and this show is a strong instance of that. For “Hope through Darkness” a generation that’s been confronting issues of the environment, poverty, freedom, and more since the 60s, invites a younger generation in to curate, and share a sense of just what young people today are thinking. And it’s an essential dialogue, as those that have been there before can offer the advice of experience, while those just getting started can keep the perspective of their elders perpetually refreshed. Rather than dismissing the value of such views by saying, “young people these days,” by inviting 20 something curators Matt Shultz and Heather Campbell creates greater possibilities. Furthermore, this exhibition breaks still more barriers: in showing the works of some who would identify as artists alongside others who would definitely not claim such a title. This mix demonstrates that we all have this inherent need and ability for artistic expression, to find our voice, in whatever fashion it is manifested and cultivated.

Which brings us to the artwork itself. First up the work of Hong Chong, a doctor by day (and night), x-ray images behind glass, a collage of human and mechanical parts, with fragments of thoughts, poems, similarly burned into the black background. Each glass is cracked, spidery tendrils stretching outward across the surface. Lit from behind, these draw attention, we read them as if an x-ray, seeing through something, thinking of the context of body, of replacement parts, and read deeper into the collage of words. Many of the contributors share a techno connection, an influence of lyrics and imagery from that scene.

Paul Biondo’s “These People Are Using Your Eyes” is a haunting, barely visible eyeless face, painted, almost smeared, on cardboard with words scrawled upon it, all attached to a scrap of wood from some former structure – quite Detroit in material and execution. The reference to eyes is picked up in a series of odd – spooky, yet whimsical masks produced by the curators respectively. There’s a sense in these works of the alien, of a loss of our selves, a search for identity. Biondo also provides text for Campbell’s book of imagery – solarized plant structures, delicate in shimmering black on black pages. Really a gorgeous look, if at times impossible to read the text overlaid on the velvety images. Don Desander’s “Boy Kills Bird Kills Snake” is a series of birds and winged snakes pinned up as if flying across the beams of the galleries east wall – deceptively serious imagery, masked as a bit lyrical narrative.

Alana Carlson, offers up two distinct works: the first, a painting of a woman working behind a bar (a bit out of place given the rest of the works in the show) – which is warm and filled with rich light, though inconsistent in figuration, and the second, an installation of a homeless figure, draped in a blanket, apparently in a wheelchair with other familiar trappings. Cobbled together from bicycle tires, shoes, pants, and other props, it does create a definite uncomfortable presence – to be avoided in proximity and vision. Francis Brazeau’s nearby photo diptych with the words “Tis better to give” on the first and “than to receive” on the second, addresses confrontations with authority, as the play on words depicts people beating an authority figure, and in the second being beaten. The grainy, video-esque quality of the images adds to the impact of the likely reality of the scenes. Matt Demmon’s “Verses Line Verse” is poetry and photos glued onto a cardboard backing. It doesn’t look pretty in an art gallery sense – it’s raw, which adds to its authenticity. We learn that Demmon is entering the world of organic, urban agriculture, which connects to the sense of care present in his work, and the idea that this generation does think about their world, their place in it, and what they can do.

There’s no denying the work is uneven, as it must be, given the range of folks drafted in, but there is a consistency of language, of approach to this time in history. In their essay for the show, “Dark Future,” curators Shultz and Campbell write, “The hippie project has failed. …, the class struggle has failed. … Critical problems identified years ago have gone unsolved.” This show answers no more questions than it raises either. But it shows that thinking is going on, that young folk are recognizing what’s going on in the world. As Shultz and Campbell say, in accepting the current state of affairs, we can let go of fear and find a sort of hope. In giving a venue for these voices, Alley Culture creates the possibility for dialogue, and shows that in coming together, we can find hope for a bright future. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com