Artists pay homage to the singer

by Joseph Wolin
Time Out New York
January 28, 2011

Chris Bogia, Joni

Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts, through Sat 5

As Q-Tip once said, Joni Mitchell never lies, at least, apparently, not to middle-aged gay men, the demographic occupying the preponderance of wall space in this group show of artists inspired by the singer and her music. Keith Mayerson straightforwardly transcribes album art in watercolor. Rupert Goldsworthy appends a predictable, if heartfelt, coming-of-age text to an image derived from the LP The Hissing of Summer Lawns; while John Kelly photographs himself in Joni drag, though his pictures lack the haunting magic of his live performances. Erik Hanson's angular abstractions, resembling Cubist paint chips, are meant to evoke the duration of listening to a record; here, three flank his Expressionistic portrait of a walleyed Mitchell. Chris Bogia's blowup in colored yarn of the cover of Blue hangs between a suspended pair of carved wood eyes dripping blown-glass tears above a white ceramic doodad on a rug, mixing the camp craftiness of fandom with the symbolic kitsch of home decor.

Yet for all the male adulation, women in the exhibition channel the lady of the canyon with more affecting verve. Melanie Schiff's Reflecting Pool, an image of Blue floating in a trash-strewn swimming pool, despite its dappled sunlight, encapsulates a forlorn sense of abandonment. In the video California/Blue, Abbey Williams sits in various Ikea display rooms, crooning sweetly along with the music playing on her earphones. Amid hanging price tags and voracious shoppers, her actions seem, like some of Mitchell's finest tunes, a plaintive protest against the consumerism and obliviousness of the everyday.