Patrick McDonough's reck room @ Flashpoint
rug. digitally printed woven rug, 36 x 50 inches. Detail from Patrick McDonough's reck room. Photograph by Pat Padua.
A paean to the rec rooms of suburban youth, McDonough's installation furnishes the space at Flashpoint with work that the viewer is invited to engage with, in many cases directly, as with the magnetic poetry tiles scattered on a cube table and refrigerator, and the combination foosball/ping-pong table that is the gallery's centerpiece. But many of the pieces on display work on levels that are not immediately apparent.
For such a playful artist, McDonough constantly takes you out of your comfort zone, repurposing objects and using unlikely media. Many objects in the show are not what they at first seem. That the chandelier hanging from the Flashpoint ceiling is made of foam koozies is clear enough. But an inventory of artworks notes that the piece also consists of "beer fragrance, bourbon fragrance, tobacco fragrance, pizza fragrance." A mini-refrigerator placed atop the gallery's water fountain might seem to render the fountain unusable, but on the contrary: the box is hollowed out and the bottom removed, so you just open the door to have a drink. This can be learned easily enough from watching other gallery visitors, thus the process of socialization is part of the work. The party is the art.
Patrick McDonough's reck room. Photography by Pat Padua.
The artist explained to me that the Coors Light label suggests 19th century landscape artists, and it is this bridge between highbrow and lowbrow that makes his work so deceptively simple. According to Joseph, reck room "asks viewers to contemplate the intersections between art and everyday life," which is true enough. And yet this clever, intelligent work has such an ironic distance that the surface playfulness is provocative and even unsettling. The pieces of reck room suggest the comfort of the basement den, but only to a point. The viewer is invited to play, but the result reminds me of Harry Harlow's experiments with monkeys, substituting a wire frame for a cuddly mother. The distance between Flashpoint and a shag carpet in suburbia is not just conceptual, but real, which lends a sadness to the proceedings, as if the artist is already surveying the roomscape of empty beer cans to evoke the feeling that the party's over. Visit reck room and interact in all the ways you can interact with it, but also approach it at a distance and take in the absences. It's chilling.
reck room will be on display at Flashpoint through October 9, 2010. On September 26th, Flashpoint will partner with Pink Line Project to host a Pink (UN)Panel at Flashpoint. Visitors will be invited to participate in rec room activities and engage with the artist and one another in a casual environment complete with a live screening of the Redskins game, PBR and rec room snacks. There is a suggested donation of $10.