The Brooklyn Rail

Growing up on suburban Long Island in the 1980s, the fantasy of the East Village art scene trickled down through snippets of stories and photographs in a pre-digital culture. Among the cool kids defining the scene during those years, artists Judy Glantzman and Stephen Lack were the coolest. Pioneers of their era who both showed with Gracie Mansion Gallery, Glantzman and Lack metaphorically mingle through a series of recent and older works in a nostalgic show, Over Decades, at Bill Arning Exhibitions in Kinderhook.

During my visit, Arning spoke of their status as integral players within the downtown punk scene and “survivors” from their generation: “These two didn’t die of drugs or AIDS,” he said matter-of-factly. Indeed, not only have they persevered through the ensuing years, they have continued to make artwork. Arning was elated by the opportunity to bring Glantzman and Lack together, not amid the gritty streets of Manhattan, but rather in a charming hamlet of Upstate New York: “Fifty years later and I finally have the East Village gallery of my dreams,” he said with a chuckle.

Over Decades presents Glantzman and Lack as they explore two sides of a fading world, where semblances of meaning are revealed and dismantled at once. Glantzman’s paintings border on cerebral blueprints, and she counts on us to over analyze these curious stains of lives lived along with her. Her largest piece, Big Multi (2008-23), features layers of sulky, overlapping faces piled up on top of each other, a messy and moody scene. Two smaller works, both titled Untitled (2005), are robust with a jumble of severed hands, ghost-like phantoms, and contorted faces that appear elated and anguished amid an ocean of raw human emotion. With Red Feet (2008-23), a large half-painted face with heavy eyes tinged with crimson lines seems to evaporate as it morphs into a child’s face in the background, suggesting a buried memory that lingers still. Among her most transcendent works is Pious (2008-23), featuring a loosely painted Russian doll style head that opens to another, and yet another, as flailing hands reach here and there, while everything coalesces into a blurry realm of Abstract Expressionistic chaos. The apparent unfinished-ness of this work is its potency.

Turning to Lack, the show is given a boost of bro-like confidence in a series of bright paintings that present prosaic scenes of mostly men among men. As we toured the exhibition, Arning spoke of Lack’s status as a cult figure within the world of horror movies after his leading role in the psychological thriller Dead Ringers (1988). His escapades in cinematic gore infused his aesthetic. Many of his paintings disclose a casual strangeness, as if catching an eerie clip that leaves the viewer questioning the fuller context of things. In Power March (The March of the Lawyers) (2020), for example, five men in black suits appear motivated to swiftly parade themselves into the business at hand, while three suited men in Prepping for Trial (2020) stand stoically together in a moment of anticipation as one of them buttons up his jacket.

Like Glantzman, Lack’s slightly incomplete gestural style and wayward vibe asks us to fill in the blank with both the form and the content, and Leaving the Party (2024) is an alluring vision of this. Here a lone man in a black suit pauses at the edge of a door while three large colorful faces tower above him, seemingly in conversation about his departure. Other paintings by Lack reflect his ongoing affinity for isolated cars in nondescript lands, such as The Italian Piazza (2024), featuring a blobby red vehicle set against a European-inspired backdrop, and Van Gogh’s 911 (2020), featuring a perfectly gray Porsche backlit by a smooth yellow field and gray cloud above.

In an odd way, this show embodies the bipolar reality that many of us are experiencing as the conversation about the current political climate in the USA gives way to a more loaded dialogue about ethics and choice—with Lack we encounter faceless dudes in slick suits and idolized sleek cars, with Glanztman we confront semi-tortured souls in a choir of pandemonium. Taken together, there is a “we’re on a road to nowhere” feel in their combined ambience of aimlessness. The eighties was a decade ripe with integrity and ingenuity, and Glanztman and Lack remind us of a “time when” somewhere back then. Every one of their artworks secretly asks: where do we go from here?