ArtSeen
Chris Caccamise
Star 67
Chris Caccamise’s intimate paper sculptures are as engaging to encounter as the title of his current show at Star 67 gallery, The Secret Tornado and the Power of Being a Beast. He meticulously crafts the tiny automobiles, reservoirs, trains, and homes that compose his miniaturized world, covering the final sculpture with a thick coat of enamel paint. This last gesture gives the work an artificial veneer that facilitates the young artist’s gentle jabs at pop culture and high art.
In "This is the Life I’ve Always Wanted," a Britney Spears quote, the title’s words are constructed in paper then placed aboard a miniature flat bed truck, also made of enamel covered paper. Caccamise’s somewhat literal illustration of the commodity status of desire in popular culture is balanced by his craftsmanship and playful approach to his work. The sculpture, despite its serious message, is as innocuous as a child’s toy. Caccamise appears skeptical of art’s potential for effecting change in the society he criticizes.
The work is uneasily installed at Star 67. Most of his 29 sculptures sit on a two tiered set of shelves that project from the gallery wall between waist and chest level. There is little space between the shelves and the sculptures crowd one another. Why not use the floor of the gallery or integrate a support to allow the viewers their own miniaturized road trip through the space? Think of the pleasure of encountering "Small Forest," its stand of inch tall green trees and blue ranch house, tucked in the gallery’s corner. Such spatial considerations would highlight Caccamise’s skill in manipulating scale and force the viewer into a less static relationship with his work.
A few pieces in the show reveal considerable conceptual depth tinged with Caccamise’s omnipresent humor. "All the Water in a Swimming Pool" appears at first glance to be little more than a tabletop minimal sculpture. On closer examination it reveals itself to be what its title advertises: a model of the water contained by a swimming pool complete with small rectangular vents and illustrative waves on its surface. Caccamise, attentive to detail, gives us a true to life replica of an object that could never exist.
Once again, however, the show’s installation interferes with contemplating his work. A video monitor, installed on the wall just next to the sculptures, loops three of the artist’s videos. The sound from these quirky skits disturbs the concentration that the sculptures necessitate and merit. Star 67 is a small engaging space full of potential. The key for Caccamise lies in exploiting the spaces in which he shows to maximize the communicative potential of his work.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
96. A second-floor gallery on Mercer and Prince Street, a studio in a former synagogue on Hester Street
By Raphael RubinsteinAPRIL 2022 | The Miraculous
At the age of 31, an artist walks into a SoHo gallery containing only a single work—a 35-foot-long abstract painting—and begins to feel almost physically sick. He has been deeply affected by the political movements of the previous decade (feminism, civil rights, war protests) and realizes that he doesn’t want to go on making big paintings. He can’t stand the thought of one of his paintings ending up in a bank lobby or even in a museum.
The Type of Power Our World Needs
By Davia SpainMAY 2021 | Critics Page
I’m lying in bed. Anxiety sticking to the sheets. I kind of like it here. I’ve got everything I need in this square box of a room. Maybe all I ever really needed was a reason to stop and rest. I’ve been running a race I was never meant to win for years. But now—stillness. Everything I have been working towards has halted. My gig at the Getty—gone. My performance at the park—postponed … indefinitely. The sadness of losing it all lays on me like a weighted blanket.
Michael Rado: Show Your Work
By Charles SchultzAPRIL 2022 | ArtSeen
Michael Rado wants you to know how the fabulous works on the walls of his exhibition at Art Cake were made. He wants you to know so that you can trace the progress and appreciate the choices that organize multiple fields of information into singular compositions.
Artist Worlds and Indigenous Cultures: How Expanding Notions of Intellectual Property are Changing the Game
By Alana KushnirSEPT 2023 | Critics Page
The number of artistic projects which engage with simulated realities, immersive story-telling, and virtual world-building has surged over the past few years.1 With this growth has come an increase in the types of legal complexities of artist-led world-building projects. One complexity that hasn’t received much airtime to date is how Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) and cultural lore can be celebrated in, or conflict with, such projects.
