Sweet Believer Exit

Recently on view at 2nd floor projects in San Francisco, John de Fazio presented colorfully glazed ceramics in his signature style while Daniel Minnick employed a sophisticated take on the familiar mechanical photo booth.

Having served as an art advisor during MTV’s 1990s heyday, de Fazio seems comfortable in both commercial and fine art realms. His presence was fully felt by his Cloned Dogs, Siegfried & Roy (2007). The sculpture was replete with a leather-studded dog collar that I was told originally belonged to the famous Las Vegas duo. The dogs looked up playfully and hopefully, despite sharing a torso and set of front legs, potentially highlighting the relationship between the showmen.

John de Fazio. Sweet Believer Exit, 2009; installation view, 2nd floor projects, San Francisco. Courtesy of the Artist.

Eleven meticulously crafted bongs sat on a shelf lining the gallery wall. These whimsical and utilitarian objects d’ art optimized de Fazio’s fascination with crafting objects of desire. Egyptian Cher Bong (2001) and Madonna Boy Toy Bong (2001) evinced this fascination through their illicit appeal and established the artist as an aficionado of pop culture and Pop Art.

Minnick’s black and white photo-based works on the opposite wall of the gallery stood in sharp contrast to de Fazio’s sculptures. In his artistic statement, he professed, “To me, freedom is a horrible concept,” referring to aesthetics and thankfully not politics. Ironically, his photographic works expressed a genuine sense of the playful and free. These framed wall pieces exploited the familiar photo booth format. He grouped the four-stacked photos in series of three to effect a larger cohesive layout. Although the artist chose to use the mechanical confines of what might be considered a naïve tool, the results were anything but restrained. The artist often appeared in one of the frames disguised as a Native American chief or a vaudevillian performer. Considering the quick timing required to create narrative in the strips, Minnick must have employed a playful and imaginative creative process, contradicting his stated discomfort with freedom.

Daniel Minnick. Chief Imitation, 2009; photobooth photograph; 8 x 4 3/4 in. Courtesy of the Artist and 2nd floor projects, San Francisco.

The pairing of these two distinctive and disparate working styles in the intimate gallery space of 2nd floor projects created a pleasurable and complementary juxtaposition that considered "Pop" in relation to "Americana", and showed both artist's certain skill and mastery of their chosen subjects.

Sweet Believer Exit was on view at 2nd floor projects through Nov 1st, 2009.