(The author, enraptured)
DISPATCH FROM EVE WHITE, NOTES CONCERNING ROSS SIMONINI’S CURRENT DRAWING SHOW AT THE DENNY GALLERY WITH DAVID X. LEVINE, EAT AND DIE:
In my notebook I wrote, “it smells good.”
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To see the show, you have to walk through a tower of fake rock, the insides of which are hollow, constructed, and from the scaffolding–or what looks like scaffolding–hangs a painting of a tree.
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Material List: Coffee; tea; massage oil; turmeric; cinnamon. It’s sort of like he reconstructed the whole scene he was producing stuff in. Like, in Brooklyn, drinking coffee or, you know, attention deficit, in Brooklyn.
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Ross, from the Press Release: I’ll spend my day sliding between writing, painting, drawing, and making music, and I like it when the artwork looks like the product of this kind of activity, like it’s an object that comes out of a multifarious life. This is part of the reason why I end up using food in my work, because it’s a pigment I already have around me (and inside of me) all day long.
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At first I wanted to joke with his drawing Healthcare–like I was with the other drawings–or at first I wanted to find it funny, but it’s really unsettling. I love how unsettling it is. To me, it’s someone really sick, with tubes coming out of them. I just find it very dark. It’s a lot more organized than the others. It seems more deliberate, cautious. Delicately disgusting. The structure looks more stable, but it feels fragile and exposed and open. It’s someone sick. It freaks me out, but I’d totally like to have it.
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The thing I enjoyed the most was looking through the little flipbook of Ross’ drawings. They’re like little confident kids drawings with whatever he had next to him. He’d do something really impulsive and take it really seriously. His philosophy on chaos is probably something I’d give him a high five for.
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His work, it just seemed really itchy.
See Ross Simonini and David X. Levine’s show Eat and Die at the Denny Gallery, 261 Broome St., NYC, through June 16th.
And see more of Ross Simonini’s drawings from the show at rosssimonini.com
Eve White is an artist living in New York City. You can see more of her work at www.eveaustinwhite.com and a picture of her looking like a burrito here.
