rug. digitally printed woven rug, 36 x 50 inches. Detail from Patrick McDonough’s reck room. Photograph by Pat Padua.

They served Pabst Blue Ribbon at the opening of Patrick McDonough‘s new installation reck room at Flashpoint. The unintentional reference to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, whose unforgettable character Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) proudly favored PBR to Heineken, is appropriate. Just as that film examined the dark side of suburban America, reck room finds something strange beneath a comforting artifice.

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.