"I'll be your mirror... so you can break into endless shards" at Heist Gallery

(originally published 7/28/08 on ArtSlant.com)

"I’ll Be Your Mirror… So You Can Break Into Endless Shards", on view through August 10th at Heist Gallery, located on a busy stretch of Essex Street, is an uncanny reflection of the Lower East Side itself. The show is a cacophony of colors, textures, faces, youth, sex and religion. John Travolta makes an appearance in a cowboy hat, as does a lit-up bodega Virgin Mary, and there are plenty of empty pill bottles, wounds, and underwear to go around. All of this teeming life and raucous offering is crammed together tenement-style into one tiny room.

The exhibition as a whole, starting with the title, is achingly earnest, the combined output of approximately thirty churned-up artists, and has the feel of an end-of-semester art school crit. Some works, like Ryan Watkins-Hughes’ installation of prescription meds and blurry sickbed portraits, "Love is a losing game, but who gives a shit?" (2008), and Christopher Martino’s gouache and graphite rendering of a man surrounded by blacked-out windows, "Apex" (2008), aim for a world-weariness but still come off as vulnerable. Amongst these are wide-eyed photographs where you can feel the artist holding their breath: Jeanne Mischo’s quiet "Family Moments 1" (2008) and Jonathan Feinstein’s solemn "Portrait of Amani" (2007).

There are many works that turn said mirror onto the outside world, offering social commentary on the passing strange (fast food America gets a nod in Conrad Kofron’s "Untitled" (2007), and an over-the-top oligarch moll is haloed in Tatiana Kronberg’s "Mariya 3" (2006)) and the perversely fascinating (Marta Edmisten’s "Blind Dating" (2007), which places grainy surveillance shots of awkward suitors alongside their bravado-laden personal ads.

"I’ll Be Your Mirror" falters from the volume of work that curators Julie Fishkin and Matt Lucas included; there are endless shards indeed, some duller than others, most notably David Smith’s too literal bad joke "Velvet Polyester" (2008). But a solid group of these artists reveal messy, tremulous, and feverish interior lives, and they are compelling to watch.