Beyond the Pale, Moti Hasson Gallery, Jan 18 - Feb 17, 2008

This rather confused group show unites under the banner of going "beyond the limits of law or decency". Sadly, the closest thing to a tenet of decency that is challenged is the Modernist order to pursue the novel. Little new territory is explored, none is staked with any authority - even the shameless retreads like Clifford Owens performance documents and pretty works by Xylor Jane fail to work any sort of new meaning into the tropes on which they depend.
One might hope that the Fluxus posturing of Clifford Owens feeds back into the myth of performance in a witty, or at least sarcastic way. In the photograph Studio Visits: Skowhegan (Donald Moffet), Owes sits naked on a chair surrounded by props which indicate some sort of performance as being in the works. Artistic authority is lent by the mention of the famous artist residency, the Skowhegan School of Painting, and the politically loaded Donald Moffett (by the way Owens, Moffett is spelled with two T's). And since the artist is naked, we know that performance with a capital P is occuring. After all, naked equals serious.
We might hope that the straight stare of Owens is a challenge to the extremely conscious posturing of the photograph. He stares directly into the camera lens with slightly crossed eyes, reclining in a classical pose. However, his other work in the show diffuses this exciting thought.
Four Fluxus Scores by Benjamin Patterson (Whipped Cream Piece, Lick Piece, 1964) documents Owens recreation of the Patterson performance listed in the title, the simple instructions of which read:

cover shapely female with whipped cream
lick
...
topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional

Owens doesn't recreate the original 1964 performance itself, but merely follows the directions Fluxus fashion - he opts to leave off the optional cherry but includes the nuts. His own, that is. For whatever reason, Owens is also naked in this acting out of the Fluxus performance. This puzzling decision, along with the clinical white of the photographs setting, seems to again be a struggle to find artistic legitimacy in played out terrain. Why be naked? Why do it in a gallery setting? Why photograph it and show it to us? In trying to make these performances his own. his choices seem consistently odd in a non-challenging way. In Owens' defense, the original performance of the piece included a naked woman which wasn't expressly called for either - let's all assume that the reason Owens is naked is somehow related to this fact.

Seriously folks, why do performance artists still love to be naked? Is there really any territory left to tread in the naked world? And of all the folks that need to be chastised for the treatment of the nude, the Fluxists are pretty low on the list.

Other artists in the show fair better, but few properly shine. Kerstin Brätsch is probably the best of the lot, with geometric wall assemblies made up of photocopies and painted bits. Paul Pagk comes a close second with bright geometric paintings showing thin lines and rough brushiness, hard to go wrong with paintings of this sort. Shinique Smith surprises with beige-ified versions of her earlier cloth bundles - not necessarily exciting but it is always nice to see an artist change things up a bit. Tommy Hartung has a sculptural piece that has more to say about video than his video does. And Uri Anan has a video with a soundtrack that has little to do with the video - experimental video worthy of that long established genre.
But most of these artists, and don't fault them for this is an easy thing to do, fall into the same trap as Clifford Owens and the Fluxus work: They are following a script written by someone else and desperately trying to make it their own through heavy handed applications of art tools; nakedness, busyness, tropes and tricks. Beyond the Pale is more about resurrecting the mythological dead than testing any sorts of limits.