Amy Reidel. Tumor Storm, 2016; loose glitter and colored sand on printed vinyl; dimensions vary. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: David Johnson Photography.

Several pieces are peppered along the hallway that runs from the entrance of the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Gallery within the Sheldon. Some are displayed independently, while others are clustered together. In Puking Roses (2016), fake roses are arranged in single file on a wall, vomiting tinsel that hangs like ringlets of green snot. Reidel’s grandmother is loosely painted on an irregularly shaped piece of canvas tacked to the wall in Pink Grandma and Kleenex Crown (2016). The subject’s hair is fluorescent pink and adorned with crumpled tissues and fake flowers. Two small assemblages, titled Tumors (2016), are beautiful conglomerations of handmade geodes, crystals, fake flowers, shredded snapshots, tinsel, and cut paintings. The works’ title and context shifts their beauty, and they become sinister knickknacks. One rests on a white shelf; the other hangs above like a Christmas ornament.

Halfway down the hallway, and to the right, a wide doorway opens to another part of the gallery, which is divided into three sections. Each one of these rooms has its own installation. In the center space, a large mandala of loose glitter and colored sand is composed with painstaking precision on a low, broad platform. The design of this work, Tumor Storm (2016), is roundish, asymmetrical, and organic—a composite of a colored MRI scan and weather radar. Multiple colors clash and complement each other as distinct shapes edge against one another.

Amy Riedel. Tumors, 2016; homemade geodes, crystals, fake flowers, shredded photos, tulle, tinsel, string, cut paintings, hanging wire, hot glue; dimensions vary. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: Amy Reidel.

There is tension between Reidel’s resplendent materials and foreboding subject matter. Her use of glitter in particular adds whimsy to the work, while providing a response to her mother’s illness. Anyone who has worked with glitter knows that it gets everywhere. It trails behind you and sticks on your person days after you’ve come into contact with it. In other words, glitter spreads like a disease, making it an appropriate—albeit humorous—medium for Reidel to work with. Like the sand mandalas made by Tibetan Buddhists, Tumor Storm is temporary, and the intricate installation will be swept away at the end of its showing—a somber reminder of life’s transience.

Amy Reidel. Radar Home, 11.8.13, 2016; installation view, the Sheldon. Audrey Wig, 2016; friendship bracelets, ribbon, sequins, fake flowers on styrofoam wig stand; dimensions vary. View From a Room, 2016; acrylic, oil, and spray paint on canvas with velour; dimensions vary. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: David Johnson Photography.

In the next room, a wig made of friendship bracelets and ribbons, Audrey Wig (2016), rests on a Styrofoam head covered with sequins and two blue, fake flower eyes. Reidel’s friends made the bracelets at her request, and the artist added burgundy ribbons to raise awareness of multiple myeloma. Fabricating a wig from these, Reidel honors those undergoing cancer treatments and their resulting hair loss. Nearby, an abstract painting, View From a Room (2016), hangs behind navy-blue velour curtains. Multiple layers obfuscate any discernible image, although horizontal stripes of golden, stenciled spray paint suggest blinds.

In the darkened back corner of the last gallery, a compilation of home videos from the early ’90s is projected on a wall. Footage of family gatherings is layered and paired with a solo piano arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” performed by Steve Valli specifically for the video. Personal recordings are interspersed—Reidel’s grandmother breathing with an oxygen mask during her last hours and her family’s conversation and laughter at the meal after she passed, among others. Beneath these is the methodical “beep…beep…beep…” of a heart monitor—another solemn reminder of mortality. The video evokes a sense of melancholy as Reidel shares fond memories of loved ones.

Amy Reidel. Radar Home, 11.8.13, 2016; installation view, the Sheldon, St. Louis. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: David Johnson Photography.

Radar Home, 11.8.13 is brave, and this bravery makes up for its formal disparities. Reidel’s works reflect the messy experience of a loved one fighting a terminal illness. She allows access to intimate, painful, and sometimes awkwardly personal moments that many would keep bottled up inside. Several works are gorgeous, some are a little grotesque, and the exhibition feels therapeutic—for Reidel, her family and friends, and for viewers. Some may appreciate the works’ beauty and humor elicited through colorful and dazzling craft materials that are both lush and tacky. Others might be moved by its sincerity and heartfelt content. For Reidel, Radar Home, 11.8.13 seems to be about overcoming obstacles and accepting those that cannot be overcome—remaining productive, creative, and positive during moments of emotional distress.

Amy Reidel: Radar Home, 11.8.13 will be on view at the Sheldon Art Galleries in St. Louis through January 14, 2017.

Jeff Robinson. Dummy Vexillography, 2016; installation view, STNDRD, St. Louis. Courtesy of STNDRD. Photo: STNDRD.

Consistent with recent tendencies in painting and sculpture, and mirroring similar concepts that Raphael Rubinstein proposed in his 2009 essay “Provisional Painting,” or by the New Museum’s inaugural group exhibition, “Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century,” Robinson’s assemblage sculptures often reject conventional skills and are made with unconventional, unassuming materials. The gallery statement for Dummy Vexillography asserts: “[The work] defies […] standards at each stage of making, from design to material and fabrication, and ultimately to intended function. The emblem that results is needlessly overwrought, hopelessly illegible, and utterly useless.” In his studio practice, Robinson creates compulsively crafted objects that are rooted in abstract formalism but are complicated through the significance of industrial or found materials. In Dummy Vexillography, the artist continues this attitude toward form and material but, prompted by STNDRD’s program, directs his efforts toward the careful, time-honored trade of flag design.

Jeff Robinson. Dummy Flag, 2016; mixed-media assemblage in wood and acrylic frame on wood base; dimensions variable. Courtesy of STNDRD. Photo: STNDRD.

Diving into vexillography—the art and practice of designing flags—Robinson began researching flags (which, outside of this show, are not a part of his practice) and soon discovered Good Flag, Bad Flag: How to Design a Great Flag, a simple how-to guide that distills the principles of flag design into five basic guidelines. Alongside its written instructions, the publication provides illustrated examples of good and bad flags, thus its title. Using this as a starting point, Robinson created his own booklet: a hardback, trifold folio titled simply, Bad Flag. While the original pamphlet is cheap and made of glossy papers that are folded in half and stapled down the center, copies of Bad Flag are stylish art objects; in fact, the booklet is more polished and sleek than any flag that might be crafted with its guide. Two copies of Bad Flag are placed reverently on a shelf, their red buckram covers adorned with cream-colored paper, incised with a star, and embellished with gold ink.

In his book, Robinson lists the five guidelines from the original text but relabels them as “restrictive” principles. He also creates a list of responses that contradict or subvert the original five, which he then used as an impetus to create his flag-like, sculptural work, Dummy Flag. Shifting the purpose of these standards from flag design to art-making, they function differently. Good Flag, Bad Flag maintains that a successful flag should be simple and readily made—attributes that are (typically) in opposition to the purposes of art. Robinson’s flag, if indeed it can be called such, is not simple and is definitely not reproducible. Instead, Dummy Flag is a one-of-a-kind object infused with multiple layers of meaning through research, materials, composition, and construction.

Jeff Robinson. Dummy Vexillography, 2016; installation view, STNDRD, St. Louis. Courtesy of STNDRD. Photo: STNDRD.

Above the shelf of folios, a black vinyl decal depicts the anatomy of a flag. The diagram is appropriated from Good Flag, Bad Flag and has been altered by Robinson: The orientation has been shifted from horizontal to vertical, the flag’s outlines are dashed instead of solid, and words have been realigned. The diagram further alludes to Robinson’s source of inspiration while helping viewers discern the (mostly) indiscernible flag-like qualities of Dummy Flag—a bricolage of hardware store scraps. In this assemblage, wood, carpet padding, and insulation are meticulously crammed between two panes of glass encased in a frame; three-dimensional materials are compressed into a picture plane that can be viewed from both sides, resulting in an abstract composition that is reminiscent of a cross-section.

Although it looks light, Dummy Flag is heavy enough to warrant additional support beyond STNDRD’s flagpole, and its bottom is supported by a wooden bracket; the piece is fixed in place—unflappable—further negating its intended purpose as a flag. Stars are absurdly omnipresent. A vertical stripe adorned with stars runs down the composition’s center, and paint skins with laser-cut stars are pressed against glass and wrapped around a dowel—tongue-in-cheek motifs that signify the American flag and kitsch patriotism. Referring to the anatomy of a flag diagram, a seemingly abstract section of ceiling tile in the upper corner of Dummy Flag becomes a canton: any quarter of a flag, but usually the upper hoist (left) quarter, such as the American flag’s field of stars. Where the United States has constellated a star for each of its states, proposing a cosmic unity, Robinson has a fist-sized hole in the tile’s center, filled with a thick slab of dried house paint garishly spray-painted and surrounded with yellow insulation material. The crude, circular shape is a meaningless symbol within a self-defeating flag.

Jeff Robinson. Dummy Flag, 2016; mixed-media assemblage in wood and acrylic frame on wood base; dimensions variable. Courtesy of STNDRD. Photo: STNDRD.

While the numerous stars, vertical stripe, and canton section within Dummy Flag facetiously allude to the American flag, the comparison is secondary, and it is only when considered within the context of the installation and its title that it is recognized as such. The overall concept of Dummy Vexillography seems a means to an end—a pretense that allows Robinson to indulge in material experimentation and formalist preoccupations, engaging with and reveling in material culture and painterly styles and traditions, rather than political discourse.

Jeff Robinson: Dummy Vexillography will be on view through November 18, 2016.

Albert Yowshien Kuo. Still Boxing, 2016; oil and mixed media on canvas; 70 x 66 in. Courtesy of Albert Yowshien Kuo. Photo: Albert Yowshien Kuo.

In Still Boxing (2016), two central characters spar in a boxing ring—a muscular Black man wearing boxing gloves and shorts, and a White teenager of average build, naked from the waist up and wearing slim jeans with white briefs peeking out. The adolescent’s back is turned to the viewer, and his left leg is awkwardly outstretched, giving the impression that he has been injured. While the Black man is poised in a defensive crouch, ready to bob and weave with athletic dexterity, the teenager looks vulnerable and ill-prepared for the match. The two opponents clearly relate to race, but the roles they have been cast in do not conform to familiar stereotypes. The weak position of the White player conflicts with the history of Black oppression under White authority.

Rather than clarify, other elements within the painting further complicate its meaning. On the right, a referee steps into view; he is dressed in a standard white shirt and black bow tie, and wears the foreboding addition of a combat helmet. On the left, another man wears a similar helmet, along with a bulletproof vest over his bare torso; he could be a riot control officer. In his hands, he wields what looks like a pool stick and is jabbing at a ludicrously small bull curled in a fetal position. A series of banners hang overhead and are inspired by American World War II propaganda posters. One bears the early Ivory Soap slogan “99 44/100% Pure.” Originally used as a pledge of quality by the Procter & Gamble Company, its meaning ominously shifts within Kuo’s dystopian environment, connoting racism or eugenics. While the relationship between these elements and the two fighters is murky, they undoubtedly intensify feelings of alienation and aggression—compounding the emotional and political charge of Kuo’s imagery.

Albert Yowshien Kuo. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service, 2016; oil and mixed media on canvas; 74 x 128 in. Courtesy of Albert Yowshien Kuo. Photo: Albert Yowshien Kuo.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service (2016) consists of two conjoined canvases that depict multiple figures within a National History Museum. The figures are in their late teens or early twenties and are predominantly Black men. Most are shirtless—some are dressed in civilian clothing, wearing denim jeans and fashionable footwear, and others are outfitted in olive-green cargo pants and military dog tags on ball-chain necklaces. An Asian figure stands at the periphery of a cluster of men engaged in a violent scramble. In another section, a White man stands alone with limp arms held out and his head turned forlornly away. A Black woman dressed in a tank top and jeans stands apart from the crowd; she holds a pair of Timberland boots in an extended hand, grasping them by their laces. Another woman stands in the foreground with her face downcast. She is also Black but wears a simple white dress; a pair of small, white-feathered wings sprout from her back. The figures within the painting are aggressive or passive—some appear to be dancing; several could be a combination of these and are difficult to classify. Positioned rhythmically throughout the composition, the figures seem frozen in choreographed poses, acting out a tragic scene that blurs violence with ballet. A sense of theatricality is heightened by parting red curtains in the background, a nod to David Lynch, that reveal a Paleolithic Era cave painting of stampeding bison. Although the main focus of No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service is again race, it is difficult to clearly discern what Kuo hopes to express. Perhaps the artist is subverting aggressive actions by depicting them as a complex dance. If so, the painting is both melancholy and optimistic, portraying a scene rife with racial tensions yet strangely harmonized through compositional devices and staging.

Albert Yowshien Kuo. Beneath the Floor Boards, 2016; oil and mixed media on canvas; 72 x 66 in. Courtesy of Albert Yowshien Kuo. Photo: Albert Yowshien Kuo.

Kuo’s tableaux explore the current cultural landscape through the guise of traditional oil painting; images and motifs borrowed from photography and film are deftly interwoven. His combinations are at times absurd, but also poignant when considered along with the resurgent awareness—or ignorance—about contemporary concerns such as White privilege and transgender equality. Kuo, who himself is of Asian ancestry, portrays relationships that push beyond simple dichotomies of Black and White, depicting instead different cultures, races, and genders in discordant consonance. The narratives that emerge in Gonna Be Alright are difficult to fully unpack, and this seems an important component of the works. While the tableaux are open-ended, their imagery is emotionally charged, compelling viewers to confront their own experiences and contemplate the complexities of race and class relations.

Albert Yowshien Kuo: Gonna Be Alright is on view at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary in St. Louis, Missouri, through May 18, 2016.

Lauren Cardenas. Case Study 001, Mother 001, 2011 (detail); full-color perfect-bound artist book; 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 1/4 in. Courtesy of the Granite City Art and Design District.

Curated by JE Baker, the exhibition at the gallery named Insurance features the artists Lauren Cardenas, Nic King Ruley, Karol Shewmaker, and Caitlin Metz. Three digital prints by Cardenas are arranged in a row on one wall. Case Study 001, Family Portrait (2011) depicts five clusters of prescription pills; each cluster is labeled with a letter and represents a member of Cardenas’ family, while a lone pill represents the artist. Solid and dashed lines trail back and forth between members, mapping the relationships of both actualized and potential inheritance. The other two prints are visually similar, but one is focused on Cardenas and the other on her mother. These images are sparser, with fewer pills and no lines. Text in the top-right corner of each print provides data that partially decodes the ambiguity of the portraits. Below these, two books rest on a cart, representing—as with the portraits—the artist and her mother. Inside both, names and additional information are provided about the pills; back pages are left ominously blank—a space for potential additions. Because of their clinical aesthetic, the books and prints appear to be impersonal, but as their content slowly emerges, they reveal highly personal information, unabashedly showcasing a medical genealogy for all to see.

Nic King Ruley. Mrs. Sibley, PA, b. 1951, 2016; IV stand, IV bags, urine, water pump, variable electric switch, looping DVD media, screen, sod; 60 x 24 x 70 in. Courtesy of the Granite City Art and Design District.

Nic King Ruley’s sculptural installation, Mrs. Sibley, PA, b. 1951 (2016), pays tribute to his mother, who suffers from MS and is in the last stages of her life. The installation is composed of a rusted IV stand placed on a rectangular plot of sod; two IV bags filled with his mother’s urine hang from the stand. At human height, the abject readymade is anthropomorphic, and the elastic, urine-filled sacs feel like a pair of lungs. The work would be macabrely funny if not for its somber content. Attached to the pole of the IV stand, a small screen plays a slide show that depicts images of the artist’s mother. A recording of her heartbeat emanates from a speaker placed on the floor, and its rhythmic pulse quietly resounds in the intimate space.

Karol Shewmaker. A Year or So, 2016 (detail); artist book. Courtesy of the Granite City Art and Design District.

In her book A Year or So (2016), Karol Shewmaker documents a year spent living in her childhood home with her mother, beginning the day after her father’s death. Multiple images depict the same view through a window. The images are arranged chronologically, and sometimes an image is cropped by the edge of a page and continues onto the next one. Text culled from mundane conversations between the artist and her mother are interwoven. Through text and images, Shewmaker develops a rhythm with subtle variations, capturing the banality of passing time.

Caitlin Metz. Tell Me a Story About Your Mother, 2016 (performance still); blind contour drawing performance. Courtesy of the Granite City Art and Design District.

Also in the gallery, blind contour portraits from Caitlin Metz’s performance, Tell Me a Story About Your Mother (2016), are casually taped to a wall. Their presentation underscores the candidness of the performance in which Metz drew participants’ portraits—without looking at her paper—while they did as the title suggests.

Catalina Ouyang. Bumpy Plank (Girl Against Whites), 2016; aqua resin, extruded polystyrene, steel, bondo, enamel paint, clear coat; 96 x 24 x 10 in. Courtesy of the Granite City Art and Design District.

The exhibition continues outside with Catalina Ouyang’s sculpture, Bumpy Plank (Girl Against Whites) (2016), which is placed in the center of the semicircular gravel area of the space named Launchpad. The sculpture stands upright and is inspired both by the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the signature planks of the minimalist artist John McCracken. Bumpy Plank is painted light pink, and an upper corner curves softly downward, undermining the ersatz masculinity of its phallic form. Tensions between form and subjectivity are further compounded by the inclusion of a small, placard-like text embedded in the sculpture’s surface, an appropriated text from the artist’s mother that reads, “You are a girl against whites, but love white boys. You make me confused.” Ouyang conflates the masculinity of hard-edge minimalism with femininity, emphasizing her Asian ancestry and sexuality.

Catalina Ouyang. Bumpy Plank (Girl Against Whites), 2016 (detail); aqua resin, extruded polystyrene, steel, bondo, enamel paint, clear coat; 96 x 24 x 10 in. Courtesy of the Granite City Art and Design District.

Across the street in the unfinished space of Plaque gallery, Chelsea Knight’s video The Breath We Took (2013) is reverse-projected in a doorway and portrays how women from an intergenerational family perceive motherhood and marriage. Although shot in a documentary style, the “reality” of the situation becomes suspect as characters recite monologues and improvise. Although a separate exhibition from Make Your Mother, Knight’s video complements the other show thematically.

The works in Make Your Mother are wide-ranging in form, but more importantly they are wide-ranging in how they relate to the concept of motherhood. Where the artists are at in their lives is represented in their portrayals of this relationship. Shewmaker documents how her role as a daughter shifted as she became her mother’s caregiver; Ruley contemplates his mother’s mortality. Quyang’s sculpture is poignantly lighthearted, depicting the confusion that transpires from a generational and cultural gap, while Knight comments on how perceptions of motherhood have evolved over time. The exhibition’s concept elicits personal responses from each individual, resulting in a succinct group of diverse works.

Make Your Mother is on view at the Granite City Art and Design District (G-CADD) through Saturday, May 14, 2016.

Drew Heitzler. Drew Heitzler, 2016; installation view, Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis. Courtesy of Parapet Real Humans.

The paintings were secondary to the talk/performance that transpired. While the audience settled and conversed quietly, Heitzler slipped to the back of the gallery as Ann Marie Mohr, a local performer and the artistic director of OnSite Theatre in St. Louis, made her way up to the front, purposefully donned the glasses and hat, mounted the stage, and began reciting a monologue prepared by Heitzler entitled, “How to Disappear In(to) California.” Reading from a stack of papers, Mohr projected her voice, detailing how the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction unanimously recommended Gravity’s Rainbow for the award in 1974, but the prize board refused the panel’s advice; consequently, the prize was awarded to no one that year. After this anecdote, Mohr digressed into a lengthy speech loosely centered on California, mentioning a disparate range of cultural figures and ideas that included Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, adolescence, the culture industry, sadomasochism, music, William S. Burroughs, Walter Benjamin, Mickey Mouse, National Socialism, occultism, imposture, and narcissism—to name a few. She concluded the speech with another reference to Pynchon, this time about Inherent Vice, bookending an impenetrable rigmarole with allusions to the reclusive author.

Drew Heitzler. Drew Heitzler, 2016; installation view, Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis. Courtesy of Parapet Real Humans.

This performance—which lasted just under an hour—was no doubt inspired by the 1974 National Book Awards ceremony, in which a comedian accepted an award on Pynchon’s behalf and delivered a rambling, pseudo-scholarly speech that left many in the audience to assume he was the author. Mohr’s performance, however, fooled nobody; by choosing a woman to replace himself, Heitzler clearly did not intend to deceive. Mohr’s lack of convincingness as Heitzler’s impostor was further compounded by the deliberately apathetic attempts at disguise, putting on and taking off his hat and glasses. On its surface, this absurd charade was an homage to Pynchon, both in delivery and Heitzler’s unabashed use of dense and complex language. Rather than furthering one’s comprehension of his practice, the reading was a performance that pushed the limits of endurance—of the performer and the audience—and operated beneath a veneer of theoretical circumlocution that obfuscated its lack of substance.

Drew Heitzler. Drew Heitzler, 2016; installation view, Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis. Courtesy of Parapet Real Humans.

Although it was a frustrating experience, the performance—specifically the idea of imposture—was thoughtfully linked to the works on display. The paintings were appropriations of images found online and therefore not wholly Heitzler’s own. Watching the video of Gumby alongside Mohr, it was hard not to consider the animated character as a stand-in for the artist. Meanwhile, the atonal music elicited a feeling similar to the language of the speech, offering no melody to grasp onto, just as the disjointed diatribe of the speech was too dense to absorb through simple narration.

Drew Heitzler. Drew Heitzler, 2016; installation view, Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis. Courtesy of Parapet Real Humans.

Heitzler’s elaborate digression successfully expressed a juvenile nihilism that pervaded the exhibit, but he missed an opportunity to partake in an intelligent conversation with his audience. The performance felt like a commentary on our culture’s inability to focus; if this was Heitzler’s objective, there’s an element of (probably intentional) perverse hypocrisy to his script. Rather than developing a thesis, Heitzler touched on multiple tangents, teasing his audience with fragments and simplistic observations about complex concepts. Perhaps he meant to undermine the theoretical language prevalent in art criticism, but he fell into the same trappings he may have sought to subvert.

The performance took place at Parapet Real Humans, in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 10, 2016.

Conrad Bakker. The Crystal Land, 2014 (detail); oil on carved wood panels; 24 ft. x 20 in. Courtesy of the Luminary.

In front, a multitude of postcard-size images cover the gallery windows in an ordered gestalt. This installation, Julia Weist’s Parbunkells Image Archive (Composition for Inside and Outside) (2015–2016), documents a body of work that started when Weist was commissioned to turn a vacant billboard in New York into a public artwork. Her concept was simple: In black Apple Garamond font on a white ground, she presented the 17th-century English term parbunkells. The billboard looked more like a sleek advertisement for a new product than an archaic, forgotten word (at the time of Weist’s encounter with the term, there were no Google search results for parbunkells). After the unveiling, the word quickly went viral. Its original meaning—“coming together through the binding of two ropes”—shifted as the public began inventing new definitions and merchandising the word, resulting in a massive body of work, not made by the artist, but instigated by Weist through her choice and placement of a word. The images at the Luminary are culled from these appropriations. Occasional photos containing the word, including some of the original billboard, are peppered throughout otherwise unconnected, mundane imagery.

Julia Weist. Parbunkells Image Archive (Composition for Inside and Outside) 06/12/2015 – 1/1/2016, 2015-2016; UV ink on adhesive vinyl; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Luminary.

Eva and Franco Mattes’s Image Search Result (2014) is composed of multiple consumer goods, all printed with the same image of a woman dressed in workout clothes, sprawled on a gym floor next to a barbell, physically depleted. To find the image, the Mattes ran an internet search for the word “exhausted.” The printed objects are trivial, and the way they are presented underscores their insignificance: A blanket, wristlet, and dog leash hang casually on the wall; on the floor, a pair of flip-flops is placed next to a rolled-up yoga mat, standing on end and partially unfurled. The idea of the work itself is appropriated—the Mattes bought the idea from the original artist and then made their version of the concept.

Eva and Franco Mattes. Image Search Result, 2014; print on blanket, wristlet, dog leash, yoga mat, flip-flops, contract; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Luminary.

Marianne Laury places three white shadow boxes in a row (à la Donald Judd) on a rectangular platform topped in gray carpet. At the fore, a golden ceramic statuette, Sunfly, holds a microphone, presumably belting out some pop standard. The platform and statuette evoke the feeling of a karaoke stage. Strobe lights flash inside the boxes, calling attention to inscrutable texts etched in their glass. Each box shares its title with a pop song—All Night Long, Because I Got High, and Zombie—and it’s clear that the phrases are wordless vocables extracted from the songs. Removed from their original context—and detached from emotive vocals and the driving force of backing music—the lyrics lose their original conviction and descend into disaffected gibberish.

Marianne Laury. Know Yourself, 2016; installation view, the Luminary, St. Louis. Courtesy of the Luminary.

In his installation, The Crystal Land (2014), Conrad Bakker presents a series of twenty diminutive oil paintings on carved wood panels. Placed on a wide shelf, some of the smaller paintings lean in front of the larger ones. Loosely referencing Robert Smithson’s idea of a non-site, each work shows a zoomed-in view of a hand holding a crystal—painted renderings of appropriated images from eBay crystal sellers. Bakker painstakingly captures every detail of the original images, and tensions between realism and abstraction flare where the minute ridges of hands and fingers and intricate landscapes of crystals flatten into patterns of line and color.

Edra Soto. Know Yourself, 2016; installation view, the Luminary, St. Louis. Courtesy of the Luminary.

In her Tarima series (2013), Edra Soto depicts delicate graphite renderings of empty stages on vibrantly colored gouache grounds. The stages are based on her memories of a Puerto Rican variety TV show. Placed in a corner between these jewel-like sketches is a plastic lawn chair upholstered with a tiger-print beach towel, set atop a paneled plinth. The towel is close-fitting and skin-like, adhering to the chair’s contours. Born in Puerto Rico, the Chicago-based artist’s imagery and altered found objects signify the blurring of two cultures.

Chris Bradley. Know Yourself, 2016; installation view, the Luminary, St. Louis. Courtesy of the Luminary.

Like Soto, Chris Bradley plays with Duchamp’s concept of the readymade, manipulating this notion in such a way that his authorship is not questioned. His sculptures, Shield (Black) (2014) and Shield (White) (2014), are made from cast concrete and pigment but look like discarded sheets of cardboard. These trompe l’oeil re-creations are propped against the wall, as if left there during installation and then forgotten. Both are slathered with provisional paint strokes, but the marks are too ordered to be incidental. Likewise, each work has four holes incised in their surfaces, but the openings are deliberately symmetrical and, seen in conjunction with the titles, function as grips and eyeholes. Bradley and Soto take inspiration from quotidian forms, but then affect those forms to create carefully fabricated works that challenge their original banality.

The artists in Know Yourself offer a mixture of provocation and banality. Some—Bakker, Soto, and Bradley—start with appropriated imagery and forms but adeptly manipulate them so they transcend their pedestrian origins and become their own entities. Others, such as Eva and Franco Mattes, work similarly but with provocative flair; however, their incitement falls short, and provocation becomes prosaic rather than challenging. Weist—keeping with the overall concept of the exhibition—questions instabilities of authorship while maintaining her own artistic voice. Throughout Know Yourself, banality unifies dissimilar works that range from found images to recontextualized readymades, acting as a point of entry for more substantial discourse about authenticity, ownership of art objects, and the complex identities of artists.

Steven and William Ladd. Cardinal Nation, 2015; paper, glue, wheat starch, metal beads, metal trinkets, glass beads, crystal beads, pins, screws, dye, mesh, staples, and wood; 59 1/2 x 39 1/2 x 1 in. Courtesy of the Artists. © Steven and William Ladd, all rights reserved, 2015.

On one wall, works on paper are hung in two separate gridded arrangements, with twelve in each group. In the drawing Injury 1, a freehand grid is sketched with pencil, and in each unit of this framework, short, perpendicular strokes of magenta, cerulean, and black ink alternate, creating an intricate weave-like pattern that fills the page. A transparent wash of violet creates a rectangle on top of this ground and floats in the middle of the composition. Within this shape and slightly off-center, irregular patches are left unpainted, and the rectangle looks like a pane of glass with a shattered opening that exposes the layer beneath. All the drawings from this series, Injury 1–12, are nearly identical except for being distinct in color.

Steven and William Ladd. Injury 1, 2015; paper, fiber, ink, pencil, and metal trinkets; 18 x 24 x 1/8 in. Courtesy of the Artists. © Steven and William Ladd, all rights reserved, 2015.

In the other series, Merit Badges 1–12, the Ladds deviate from repetition—to an extent. Although still adhering to the constraints of the grid, they create a variety of squares and rectangles assembled from square metal trinkets that are implanted and sewn between sheets of diaphanous paper. In both series, a narrative is suggested, but the clues are ambiguous. Although there is a correlation between the title, Injury, and the carefully painted blemish in each drawing, the event that inspired these decisions is left unsaid; the word and image remain speculative and abstract. Likewise, while Merit Badges no doubt refers to the Ladds’ experiences as Cub Scouts, it is unclear what the significance of the title is in relation to the metal trinkets or the works themselves.

Steven and William Ladd. Merit Badge 1, 2015; paper, metal trinkets, pencil, and ink; 11/4 x 14 x 1/8 in. Courtesy of the Artists. © Steven and William Ladd, all rights reserved, 2015.

Spanning the length of two walls, a succession of twelve monochromes is hung neatly, single file. Again, each piece is a different color, but these are arranged in a spectrum-like sequence. Like with the Injury series, they are distinguishable from each other mainly because each work is in a distinct hue; all are the same dimensions and are composed similarly. The monochromes, however, are made of thick layers of dyed paper pulp and are coarsely textured and punctuated with finger-sized craters that are scattered across their surfaces, resulting in little excavation sites that reveal wire mesh substrates underneath. Some of these gouged holes are left bare and unadorned, while others are heavily decorated with gleaming beads, similar in color to the pulp in which they are embedded. Countless beads amass around cavities and become mildly grotesque and threatening. The kitsch commodities transform into infestations, spawn, or malignant growths that encrust orifices. Picture planes become swarming hives of activity. Whether this collocation of decoration and revulsion is intentional or not is difficult to determine. Each piece is given its own title that associates anecdotal recollections with the color of the monochrome. For instance, in the museum catalog it is explained that the red one is titled Cardinal Nation as a tribute to the local baseball team, and the brown one is titled Brownie, referring to the name of a younger Girl Scouts division in which the brothers’ sister participated. The titles are nostalgic, and their relations to colors are simplistic—because of this it is hard to imagine any subversive qualities to have been deliberate.

Steven and William Ladd. Brownie, 2015; paper, glue, wheat starch, metal beads, metal trinkets, glass beads, crystal beads, pins, screws, dye, mesh, staples, and wood; 59 x 39 1/4 x 2 3/4 in. Courtesy of the Artists. © Steven and William Ladd, all rights reserved, 2015.

No doubt the artists’ experiences in extracurricular activities as children were formative, probably even influencing their current choices of materials and processes, but these experiences as subject matter appear secondary and often a belabored effort to bestow tangible content to a studio practice that is primarily formal. That the subtitle of the exhibit—Scouts or Sports?—ends in a question mark seems subliminally telling, as if Steven and William Ladd are not wholly convinced of their overarching concept.