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Tom Sanford
Leo Koenig
An exhibition that fails to amount to any level of consequence.
In his latest exhibition at Leo Koenig, Mr. Sanford presents us with an array of his usual pop cultural imagery, executed in a kind of faux naïve children’s acrylics style, one rather queasy on the eyes. But it’s nothing that you can’t imagine it will be and nothing new, and does not strive to contend to any appreciable degree with the difficult subjects upon which he focuses.
Popular culture is a deadly difficult animal to hunt and kill. Very easily in such pursuits does, shall one say, the hunter become the hunted. In other words, attempting to contend or somehow reason with “shallow” phenomena broadcast all over the world, one very easily finds oneself complicit with such phenomena. Art these days is no different; without even trying, a successful young artist finds himself the focus of a very similar machine of media hype. The artist might conceivably succeed against such forces-that-be, but he must travel equipped with an intellectual brashness, not to mention vast sense of humor, that Mr. Sanford fails to possess any real degree.
The usual strategy, as sadly displayed by the artist here, is to affect a pose of utter cynicism. (You don’t fool me, Mr. Sanford; forced cynicism is itself a kind of naiveté.) Furthermore, aesthetically the artist has little to contribute: how many times in recent painting have we seen gold surfaces, garish colors, large breasts, intimations of lesbianism, references to hip-hop, rewarmed Pop-art (pictured), and the like? Is the daring of Andy Warhol really dead?, or just very sick indeed? I don’t buy such academicism, though it appears Leo Koenig’s clients do.
Tags: Leo Koenig, popular culture, Tom Sanford
