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| Sheri Warshauer relishes painting portraits of elite private art collections, just as she finds them, chez owner. Art-worldsters Zach Feuer of LFL gallery and Bill Previdi are among those who have granted her access. Other of her paintings feature collections showcased in glamorous lifestyle magazines. The paintings are chock full of variety. Works range from Robert Mangold geometric abstractions to cool Lisa Ruyter figurations, venerable Constructivist masterpieces and a host of more obscure hipster artists (scare quotes). All of this suggests insider sophistication, but Warhsauer’s paintings look dumb blond. They are charming good fun, just like nice shoes. —It is satire with a smack on the cheek. Warshauer represents the artworks of these other artists as no more and no less than vivid icons of themselves. They are hardly facsimiles. Nor are they close to being studies. —She willfully disregards the content. But surely you get what it is (That is a Smithson, no?) or you would if you knew of the artist. Or, at least, you see that it is that kind of art. Each work, for her, is a fresh venture, requiring her to improvise a unique set of impromptu techniques. —Nor is she beyond crayons, if it so strikes her. —The result is a quirky patchwork of improvisation. The wooden floorboards in these dollhouse parlors have no grain. The walls, no texture. Just the art interests Warshauer—but, even then, only as it reveals the collectors’ vanity. As she sees it, for the collectors, identity is at stake, and everything depends on the visitors’ recognition of value in their proprietary curatorial acumen. The audience must be as “with it” as they obviously are. Too, her paintings present a quiz hard for any artworlder to resist. Even members of the lower art public will think they should recognize these artists, even as they don’t. All around, Warshauer revels in the social insecurity of our era in art. Jack the Pelican introduced Sheri Warshauer last year in our exhibition New Lawn. Roberta Smith in The New York Times favorably noted her paintings. |
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