Winston Willingham's RV TV

Black Francis, Svn Fngrs
Roxy Music, Viva Roxy Music and Roxy Music
Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
Cyril Vetter, Dirtdobber Blues

• There were relative successes and failures at Ephemeral Gallery's Cool Jumbo, Holy Mess group show, the biggest of both being Winston Willingham's RV TV above. Sewn together from stuffed animals into a violent luxury of texture, it managed to compete favorably with an adjacent video art projection of a large breasted woman bouncing around at the beach. The mandate of contemporary art is to upstage the classics.


• I still couldn't get a bead on it. Someone started to tell me the backstory about the stuffed animals and I wanted to plug my ears with a stray bit of fluff. If the story serves the art, the art needs to be the one telling it. Or at least the little wall card next to the art.


• I wanted to ask the artist if he were familiar with Thornton Dial and either be excited that he was and ask why you wanna do him like that then? Or just continue my usual state of glum "nobody's ever heard of anything" complaint. Nobody wants either and everybody wanted to rub up in this piece.


• I suppose if you can get a room full of art opening patrons to look away from themselves for a moment and long to roll in the art, you've succeeded in something. Maybe you didn't make them feel anything, a fool's errand most of the time, but you made them at least want to feel on something.


• Last night I said if he'd cut it into a bear rug shape and displayed it on the floor it would seem more finished, but now that seems the kind of kitsch move he narrowly avoids making with it tempting your caress from the wall. So, yeah, enough pronouncements. Nice piece! Nice show!

Edited to add: My picture above is darker and more sinister than Willingham's piece is in person. I couldn't quite Photoshop my dim pictures back into proper reproduction.

Edited further to add: I did talk to the artist briefly at the show, not about this work but an album of his I thought I reviewed years ago, and here it is. 

Location:Ephemeral Gallery, Baton Rouge, LA