Slippery Openings
March 7th, 2013
New gallery: Home Alone 2
Find two works by Betty Tompkins at Home Alone 2, the brand new LES gallery co-owned by artists Nate Lowman, Hanna Liden, and Leo Fitzpatrick. A companion to Home Alone across town, the gallery opened last week in the space vacated by Half Gallery. Home Alone 2 also shares the space with the non-profit RxArt.
The gallery is clad with a chastity veil; a white curtain stretches across the window. With a high school on the same block, young eyes have to be sheltered from Betty’s imagery, notable for its larger-than-life details of sexual congress in medias res. (Kids get mens rea from coitus peepus.) But the curtain fell down as soon as I entered the gallery, and no gallery staffer rushed to replace it.
Betty Tompkins, "Girl on Girl Painting #8," 2013
Betty is showing a drawing from 1973 and a recent painting from 2013. There’s also a 1959 painting by Dadamaino (Eduarda Emilia Maino), and combined with Betty’s work – monochrome tendencies, uncertain scale, and slippery openings – one sees the seed of a thesis. More, please!
Betty Tompkins, "Flexible Shaft Drawing #3," 1973
Dadamaino, "Volume," 1959 on the left