Art-o-Matic: A Visual Feast For Roving Eyes
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday , October 6, 2000 ; Page N61

HERACLITUS wrote that you can't step in the same river twice. That's equally true of Art-o-Matic 2000, a sprawling, shifting and unruly vaudeville of a group art exhibition taking up temporary residence in the old Tenleytown Hechinger's. At last count this year's new and (arguably) improved incarnation of the local D.I.Y. extravaganza numbered somewhere between 600 and 700 participants (double the size of the 1999 debut in the former Manhattan Laundry on Florida Avenue Northwest), a figure whose fluctuations depend on whom and when you ask--not to mention what your definition of "art" is.

"It changes daily," explains exhibit organizer Anne Corbett in an e-mail accompanying the latest and most up-to-date tally (664, as of Oct. 1, but don't quote her on that). She's right to demur--people were still installing work several days after the official opening, including artist/co-organizer Stacy Bond, seen ladling melted lipstick from a crock pot into a plastic-lined tile tub as recently as Sunday night--but that's not the main reason it feels like a different show every time I set foot in it (and that's five visits so far).

Despite my best intentions, despite my resolve to not get sidetracked by schmoozers, despite all the maps and the helpful volunteers who point me in the direction of whatever it is I'm looking for (including the exit when I've had too much), I and most others I've encountered always seem to end up wandering aimlessly around the plywood shantytowns named after "Trinidad," "Hillcrest," "Brookland" and other D.C. neighborhoods. It's the human version of what the scientists call Brownian motion. Like mindless microscopic particles, we zigzag and ping randomly from one molecule of art to another, bouncing off the walls and each other until we find something we haven't seen before.

Mind you, that's not a criticism, but the highest of praise. It's actually the only way to experience this, the most mammoth megapalooza of the local creative community, not methodically but rather haphazardly, letting your eye rove and recoil through the maze of visual stimuli. What's best about Art-o-Matic (and right now, it's both the best and the worst thing out there) is its shabby, democratic heart, which embraces disappointment as generously as it celebrates success.

It's like a giant house party, with beer and bands on weekend nights, but where the art on the walls is as diverting as the crowd. It isn't even one single, large show really, but rather several smaller ones stirred up with a giant wooden spoon: an art student's senior thesis presentation, a craft fair, a peep show (yes, there's porn--excuse me, erotica), a boardwalk art sale, a spotlight on emerging talent, an art therapy workshop (with all the self-indulgent catharsis that that implies), an interior decorator's showroom and even a museum-caliber survey of top-notch, mid-career artists all in one.

Inasmuch as it's uncurated and open to all comers, a lot of it is going to be mediocre. Some of it downright bad. Both of those statements are no-brainers and hardly qualify as critical assessment, but to those who try to hang an entire lifetime of painting on one eight-foot wall, let me add a word of advice lifted from painter and teacher Manon Cleary: Eclecticism is not the same as virtuosity. In other words, less is more.

Picking your way through the muck, though, a patient spirit and a comfortable pair of walking shoes (these cement floors do a number on the feet) will from time to time reward you with the discovery of astonishing, even breathtaking, work--all the more wonderful because it is so well hidden.

One such discovery is Eisuke Sato, an American University MFA candidate whose figurative paintings--haunted, pinched faces set atop flattened, rag-doll bodies stepping out of a mist of stippled, crusty pigment--are among the finest and quietest in what can at times be a cacophonous circus. Another diamond in the rough is the work of J. Dumbacher, whose mud-colored bricks of solid pigment mounted in industrial-style stainless steel frames belong to the conceptual-art revival that is helping to pull the mind-art of the 1960s out of the realm of the intellectual and into the visual. It's pure color--stripped of context and content--yet it's as lovely to look at as it is to contemplate. And it was three visits before I stumbled across these Zen-like pieces, which have the still force of the eye of a hurricane.

John Babineau's ethereal photographs of crushed plastic milk jugs are also particularly lovely, but as you read this, they're probably not even up any more. Don't worry: According to the Art-o-Matic Web site, the artist plans to change his work on a weekly basis. What will he bring out next?

As is true on the international scene, TV monitors and room installations feature prominently here, too, yet few can be counted among the show's most potent offerings. Of these, the professional-looking museum-style diorama of a late 20th-century North American living room by "professors" David Jimison and Daniel Sorge is probably the wittiest. Yes, humor is one thing that is never in short supply at Art-o-Matic, as evidenced by Paris Bustillos's puppet-animated video spoof of an art critics' roundtable: "I felt the power of a voyeuristic spell," opines one of Bustillos's bloviating connoisseurs of clay. (Note to self: check clips to make sure he's not making fun of me.)

Soomin Ham's disturbingly beautiful sculpture of caged white balloons silk-screened with small hand prints is a another winner, although as one literal-minded visitor noted in the artist's guest book, "My boyfriend says trapped children are not cool." In general, the site-specific installations that take advantage of the once-public building's retail character are the most intriguing, including Ira Tattleman's "Sick Building Syndrome," inspired by the loss of such beloved stores as Garfinkel's (and Hechinger's for that matter).

Other pleasures are the anonymous faux signage scattered throughout the facility that warns "Please keep all portions of your body within the handrails" and "Side effects may include headache, loose bowels and breast tenderness."

Let's see, who else is worth a shout-out? Jonathan Bucci, husband-and-wife team Michael Clark and Felicity Hogan, Kevin Cowl, Graham Caldwell, Bridget Lambert and Trish Tillman, Crisley McCarson, Ivana Panizzi, Lynn Putney (in collaboration with poet Brad Richard), Misha Ringland, Bradley Rudich (35 bucks a piece for a wall full of 69 surreal image transfers--such a deal!) and Tim Tate (if you heard his mother's ashes were included in his stunning, blown-glass memory piece, you heard right). Too many others--including my next-door neighbor and my own wife--cannot be discussed due to journalistic ethics.

One of the greatest temptations when reviewing a show like this (and really, there is no other show quite like this) is to simply rattle off all the artists' names whose work struck me, offended me, delighted me or threw me for a loop. Beyond the fact that this "Hi, Mom" approach is fundamentally unfair (not to mention logistically impossible), it is, when it comes right down to it, completely beside the point. That, after all, would simply be a reflection of my Art-o-Matic.

Have you taken the trouble to find yours yet?

ART-O-MATIC 2000 -- Through Oct. 28 at the former Hechinger's building, 4500 Wisconsin Ave. NW (Metro: Tenleytown/AU). Web site: www.artomatic.org. Open Thursdays through Saturdays from noon to 1 a.m., Sundays from noon to10 and Wednesdays from noon to midnight. Free.

Public programs associated with the exhibition include a wide variety of free musical and dance performances, open mike nights, drag bingo, cabaret, theater, poetry, artist talks, tours and children's activities. Consult the Web site for a detailed schedule.   Free.

                                     © 2000 The Washington Post