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In a world obsessed with aggrandized images of resounding success, "Just Pathetic" turns a rather different face forward. A blunt aesthetic of failure, embarrassment and thumping degradation is refreshingly proposed for consideration.
Decidedly ambitious, "Just Pathetic" looks askance at the very idea of ambition. An admittedly fashionable undertaking, it dismisses the utility of trends in artistic fashion. Pointedly commercial, it regards with considerable skepticism the recent escalation of high-flying commerce in art.
The show is, in other words, conflicted and often frankly confused about precisely where its sympathies lie. (I don't know about you, but I can certainly recognize the feeling.) Although one could wish for a presentation slightly less tentative and rambling, and a bit sharper in certain selections, "Just Pathetic" is a low-key gem.
The show means to grapple with a tendency that has turned up in disparate shows during the past several seasons, a polemical sifting that few commercial galleries bother to undertake. Among the 11 artists are some of the most provocative of the moment, including Georg Herold, Mike Kelley and Cady Noland. The show even manages to suggest some historical antecedents-specifically, by including the very different work of William Wegman and Chris Burden from the late 1970s.
"Just Pathetic" also shines inadvertent, retroactive light on two recent artistic events. First, it brings to mind "Thrift Store Paintings," the wild exhibition at the Brand Art Library in March featuring amateurs' paintings that valiantly strove for, and everywhere failed to attain, even minimal standards of mainstream artistic acceptability. Second, it could claim the presence of a great monument-namely, Jonathan Borofsky's extraordinary "Ballerina Clown," unveiled in Venice eight months ago. That startlingly successful sculpture willingly accepts the socially necessary role of playing the fool in public.