DAVE RICHARDS: NEW WORK
Pocket Pool is perhaps the most eloquent of these visual enigmas. This three-foot-by-five-foot piece features a stubby cross shape on the right side that looks like a human organ and is painted the color of dried blood. On the left side is a large black-and-white photographic cutout of a headless, armless nude standing with its back to us. The space separating it from the organ is painted the same deep red as the organ. Long thin strips of white foam board rising one or two inches above the plywood base shoot out of the organ at various angles and traverse the flat red area, hitting the nude at several points along its right side. Marking out a ricochet pattern, these low-relief lines also divide the red area into closed geometric shapes or “pockets.” The surface above, below, and to the right of the organ is painted in sections of off-green, pink, and yellow.
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Armed with this psychic map, we may feel prepared to play the show’s remaining games with some degree of luck. But the almost total abstraction of Double Kilroy or 2 of Ducks reminds us we are still lost at sea. Set on a square plywood base, the main shape in this composition is a pink circle with two prongs extending out of it, one at the top and one at the bottom. It looks simultaneously like a propeller, a steering wheel, and a double phallus. The number two appears in green on both prongs. This biomorphic shape rests in a teal blue square whose sides have been partially carved away to reveal some of the chalkboard surface of the square beneath it. The phrases “Double Kilroy,” “two of ducks,” and “double melvin” have been written in chalk on the exposed blackboard areas and smudged over. Except for a pink triangle in the upper left corner and a pink circle cut into the lower left, the rest of the surface is painted brown. Small peg holes are scattered about, and thin strips of painted foam board connect with each other willy-nilly. Three old-looking cartoon fragments shaped like tiny paper fans are tucked quietly into three of the composition’s four corners.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Michael Tropea.
