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Smashy Trashy Leif Ritchey's "Into" turns garbage into art. If clambering through urine-soaked dumpsters in search of moldy egg cartons and wrestling with rats for the remains of tattered tennis shoes sound like appealing ways to spend the summer, perhaps “found” art is the genre for you. Should you decide to nose around in the gutters for 5th Avenue candy bar wrappers and mutilated t-shirts, don’t be surprised if you bump into Leif Ritchey, the creator of “Into”, an exhibit of rescued trash currently on display at Brooklyn’s Secret Gallery. Ritchey, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, has spent the last four years in New York City not only as an artist, but also as a fashion designer and the co-owner of M.R.S. clothing. “Found” art is ideal for the artist with financial problems -- no canvases, oil paints, hunks of clay or woodworking tools are needed. Sort of like a downtrodden descendent of grade school collages, “Into” appears to be constructed exclusively from an assortment of rubbish meshed together with string, glue and industrial strength cellophane tape. None of the pieces fall into the “I can’t believe he made a huge mechanical talking civet cat out of baked bean cans” category. Rather, everything looks like what it is -- hewn together refuse. It not surprising that the exhibit does not need any “do not touch” signs on the walls. Ritchey sets the mood with a few audio-visual props. A small television, sort of embedded in a yellow cardboard box, shows an extremely grainy and static-filled tape entitled “East Flatbush Windows”. The footage seems to be mostly of people standing on a street corner. Blaring from the back area of the Secret Gallery is a montage of music that is meant to echo the hodgepodge nature of the artwork. Reminiscent of cars sailing by on the street or just someone with A.D.D. whipping across the radio band, the music is an unforgivingly-awkward mishmash of turntablist scratches, Jazz, Anita Baker and Jay-Z’s Volume I. The rear section also has several grimy throw pillows on the floor alongside a stack of scrapbooks. The arrangement appears to be a nesting region for area hobos, but is likely an interactive space for exhibition viewers. The most unifying themes of the art display are color and shape. The aptly-titled “Cool Puma Dream”, made from a Kool cigarette sign, a Puma sneaker box, vinyl and yarn, is a two-foot mix of green and black squares and circles. This concept is repeated frequently – “New Order Technique” is a sprawling amalgamation of pink and red scraps of paper, plastic and yarn. Both of the aforementioned pieces are tasteful in color and composition, but they also exemplify the major weakness of the “non-huge mechanical talking civet cat out of baked beans cans” category of “found” art: it’s a bunch of shit thrown together that seems interesting only because the components were plucked from the garbage. In short, it’s kind of gimmicky, holmes. To be sure, such a description sounds like the lunk-headed critique of a Norman Rockwell aficionado who craves pictures that look like what they’re supposed to be pictures of. But truth be told, Ritchey usually combines items into colorful piles; he rarely builds them into something new. Ritchey is most successful when he abandons the two-dimensional collage approach in favor of a more sculptural method. “Beach Yogi” is an eight-foot totem-like structure made from cloth, colored plastic and weathered boxes that feels almost tribal in is looming clumsiness. It also seems like a shrine of sorts – perhaps because it is visually suggestive of the cluttered September 11th tributes that sprout from the walls of St. Paul’s Chapel at Ground Zero. “Wings” is also an interesting piece. A suspended tree bough has been turned into a clothes rack, and from it dangle several “found” outfits. A sweater embroidered with a map of the world is festooned with plastic Super-Pops and Instant-Freezies wrappers. Another shirt writhes with strips from plastic garbage bags. The gear is obviously unwearable, but at least it’s interesting. Although “Into” is ambitious, Ritchey never really evolves past the novelty of “found” art. Perhaps in the future he will bless us with huge mechanical civet cats made from cans of baked beans. “Into” can be viewed at The Secret Gallery, located at 474 Smith St. at 9th St., Brooklyn, NY 11231. Read more articles in Arts » |
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