Jean Lowe - Ephemera - from 2014 (previously unpublished art review discovered in old email)

 

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The work of Jean Lowe caught my eye in 2010 when she presented her ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ show at McKenzie Fine Art in Chelsea (so happy to see this great gallery on Orchard Street now). This was the first time I had seen her quite funny papier-mache and enamel (fake) books with titles like: Who’s Who in American Prisons, What Would Satan Eat?, Biblical Family Values (with an orgy depicted on the cover), Something Awesome Is Coming Your Way! (with a medieval vanitas scene of skull and dying flowers on the cover) etc.

I was happy to see there was another of Lowe’s books in this current show: If God Loves Me So Much, Why Do I Have to Use My Vibrator? So she continues poking fun at the delusional self-absorption that she sees in certain strata of our culture and which drives much of the publishing industry. Yet, this show primarily uses a fake auction house theme to further examine the American micro-values that often pervade our daily lives and environment.

When you walk into McKenzie you see that Lowe has painted a fake Persian rug on the cement floor and even has a papier-mache potted plant in a corner. The walls are covered with fake auction posters and ads for auction items along with a few fake auction items themselves.

This particular auction seems heavy on ‘ephemera’ or items that reveal the passing of daily life in America. There’s the poster selling the ubiquitous ‘Lost Dog’ flier – Angus does need his medication so please help us get him back ASAP! There are goofy little poems written on hotel stationary, news clippings that were saved and are now up for sale, personal letters and even silly professional notes (all fake and all satirical).

So the big question is, what does this auction twist give to Lowe’s always entertaining work? Well, she presents stuff that is usually not at auctions – even at auctions of ephemera. She assumes that someone should see greater value in a lost dog flyer or note by a psychiatrist (about a move that a patient put on him) than folks normally see. This insight should, then, give these goofy items greater monetary value, since that seems to be the case in regard to the auctioning of art stuff in general (this seems to be an object of parody as well).

These items provide a special insight into our society that ‘real’ ephemera objects do not. The insight does not seem to be flattering either. The ephemera items at this fake gallery seem to show aspects of a society based on little more than rank consumerism, the indulging of petty whims and the pursuit of completely selfish concerns. It shows a society, perhaps, where we are encouraged to forsake the meaningful for the petty and are encouraged to pursue our own comfort ignorant of the suffering of others.

So all in all this show might make you want to move to a third-world country where more people have to be engaged in more meaningful pursuits and challenges. But, from my daily life of interacting with amazingly kind people who regularly exhibit selflessness and compassion, it might not be time to get your ticket to Laos yet – hopefully the battle between facetiousness and meaning Lowe helps to elucidate has not been completely lost by the good guys/gals of America yet.