The Thingness of the Thing, is the Thing

Some Things exhibition review

By Erik Wenzel (for ArtSlant Chicago, July 2008)

Carey Lin’s show of some paintings in "Some Things" at DOVA Temporary marks the first in a series of summer programming at the new space. Named for the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, the space opened this spring with a series of MFA thesis exhibitions. The space is part of the renewal of Harper Court, an area north of the campus in Hyde Park the University has recently purchased and plans to gentrify, if that’s the right word. Since there is already a degree of that going on around the square. And do we really need to gentrify out the Vet’s office, the Mexican restaurant and the record store? That remains to be seen. But for now, there is the art gallery, a project space/experimental lab for those in and affiliated with the art and art history departments at the University. 



In the austere white cube, nestled between Launderkoin and Dr. Wax is a spare, smartly installed group of paintings by recent University of Chicago grad Carey Lin. The aptly titled "Some Things" is carried out through the titling of the work, each piece refers to a saying with the word thing in it. It is not clear if these are, but based on Lin’s earlier work, they appear to be details of garbage bags. The kind that is white plastic and slightly transparent, so that when something rubs up against it, you can see it before it quickly fades away. It doesn’t seem particularly important, though, what the corporeal basis for the paintings is. Clearly it is an excuse to paint, or rather, an interesting visual situation to leap off of. These things, whatever they may be, are sensuous. They remind me of something someone said to me years ago about what it feels like to use oil paint. Young art students talk about “your first time” like it’s losing your virginity. Between gesturing hands and phrases about sliding it around, this person finished the rave, “it’s yummy. It makes you want to gobble it up.” These paintings don’t quite do that, but they evoke a definite pleasure in the practice. Alternating between thick viscous strokes, and light dry brushing Lin brings out these high contrast abstractions. The primarily high contrast black and white pictures seem to bleed color at various points, mainly in blood reds and deep blues.

These paintings don’t just remind us of painting of the past. Through their interest and love, inherent in every stroke, they ignite that kind of thing within us. Here is the passion of Oskar Kokoschka, Ludwig Meidner, and Manet. It’s not just for the paint being paint and nothing else, in the Manet sense. There is also an innate brutality. These paintings have a certain expression of pathos that is hard to pinpoint. But it comes out nonetheless. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim these are political, but something about this body of work does reflect a certain angst of the times we are in.

Added to all this is the curious aspect of paintings like The old new thing, where we see an edge and a shadow. For all possible interpretations, it looks like a painting of a painting. With a work like The thing is to reach this line with the ball, the edge of the chaotic stuff and the gray behind it seems more real in that there is a draped thing, and we can see it’s edge, behind that is the wall. But with Put on your things and let's go, it is more confusing. It appears to be a cropped painting of a painting of stuff, where the painting and the shadow it casts are painted as one, fully integrated image. Here I can’t help but think of George Baselitz for some reason. Is this gesture, in some way meant to declare something about the operation of painting? In a way, it serves to flatten it all out. By implying all this action is on a flat plane, we compress it to one singular thing. And then the shadow, rather than describe depth, through Lin’s handling of paint, actually flattens things out further.

Erik Wenzel is an artist and writer based in Chicago.