Paper or Plastic? art review at Lawndale Art Center by Douglas Britt
September 1, 2009
Exhibit highlights racial baggage behind “paper bag tests”
By DOUGLAS BRITT Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 3, 2009, 6:30PM
Lawndale Art Center
The paper sacks in Paper or Plastic? are a metaphor for the “baggage ... we personally carry.”
NATHANIEL DONNETT'S PAPER OR PLASTIC?
• When: Through Sept. 26
• Where: Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main; 713-528-5858 or www.lawndaleartcenter.org
The title of Nathaniel Donnett's exhibition at the Lawndale Art Center — Paper or Plastic? — is a question commonly heard in grocery-store lines.
But while Donnett draws on brown paper sacks, the plastic he collages into the larger works comes from black garbage bags.
The interplay between the two isn't just formal. It mirrors tensions between light- and dark-skinned people of African descent, and Donnett's use of the paper sacks, in particular, references the “brown paper bag test” once used to determine access to social, educational and employment opportunities. People whose skin was darker than the bag were excluded.
The way Donnett combines draftsmanship with a classroom-inspired installation — complete with a multiple-choice test visitors are invited to take on paper bags instead of standardized forms — makes Paper or Plastic? the most memorable...
Whether or not the end is near, its close enough. Charity in the billions is doled out to the über-rich by their own underlings. The poor live and die without air conditioning or basic medical care. If the pundits won’t profess it, at least artists will paint the picture. The installation Human Nature Planted does not present itself as overtly political, but it plays out that way. Curated by June Woest and Claudio Franco of Urban Artists at the Nature Discovery Center of Bellaire, Planted is a group sculptural installation by twelve innovative Texas artists. The official theme of the show is to “explore the human handprint in the natural world and how it positively and negatively influences the environment,” but the show resonates with current socio-political-economic turmoil. Nathaniel Donnett’s Myke’s Clubhouse captures the crisis from the vantage point of the forgotten poor and vulnerable; Cornell West accusing Obama of neglecting those most in need. Merging fantasy with nightmare, Donnett constructed a tree house and foreclosed it, with a red sign and a foreclosure listing in the paper. June Woest’s Pharmacy...
Art Lies Art Review of The Greatest Store That Never Sold (december issue)
December 14, 2008
Nathaniel Donnett The Greatest Store That Never Sold
Project Row Houses By William Cordova
Octavio Paz once wrote, "There is nothing worse than a labyrinth without a center." He was meditating on the reality of cultures that end up psychologically castrated due to a lack of understanding regarding their own past and meaning-due, that is, to a lack of center. Hidden in his comment is the suggestion that we ought to acknowledge the dualities that cultures have to negotiate in order to prevent themselves from going adrift. "At the exit from the labyrinth of solitude we will find reunion and plentitude, and harmony with the world."
Nathaniel Donnett's The Greatest Store That Never Sold at Project Row Houses addresses such concerns, taking the form of a makeshift minim art complete with metal shopping carts. Donnett completely transformed the interior of the house from a raw, no-thrills or frills wooden structure into an almost blindingly white, pristine space. Walls, floor, shelves and products themselves were wrapped either in white fabric or wrapped and then painted. Hundreds of items-from vintage vinyl to self-help books and homemade cowry-shell necklaces-sat patiently about, devoid of the labels that incessantly demand consumer attention. Instead,...
Houston Press Art Review ( A Time For Change) at Deborah Colton Gallery
October 23, 2008
"A Time for Change" at Deborah Colton Gallery
PaperCity fine arts editor Catherine D. Anspon curated this group show, which shifts in tone from works that embody states of flux to a more positive, euphoric status. Thankfully, Anspon resists commenting too much on the current presidential race, even though the exhibition's most prominent piece employs a candidate's likeness. The changing face of China is represented in Re-Tool, daniel-kayne's readymade-ish, red "8-ton long ram jack," which supports three gigantic wrenches stamped CHINA. Tracy Hicks evokes environmental fever with Forearm Study, a mixed-media piece incorporating glass, rubber frogs and thermometers. Nathaniel Donnett's Return Of Tha Gangsta Ego depicts the shadow of a child raised in a world of crime, nicely rendered in foam core, a little pair of tennis shoes and a gumball machine filled with multicolored bullets. And damn if that Shepard Fairey Barack Obama image won't go away. Here though, in an interesting twist, Anthony Thompson Shumate co-opts the image for his video animation I am BLUE 'cause I am RED over you, xoxoxo, in which Obama's face robotically recites a Marxist manifesto. I'm glad I don't know Shumate's politics, because I love the ambiguous nature of the work....
Houston Press Art Capsule review (mention) A Time For Change at Deborah Colton Gallery
October 22, 2008
Time For Change By Dusti Rhodes
Barack Obama is talking at "A Time for Change"...sort of. Obama appears in I am BLUE 'Cause I am RED Over You XOXOXO, a video installation by Anthony Thompson Shumate. The artist animated Shepard Fairey's portrait of the presidential hopeful to lip-synch speeches by former congressmen.
The show features 24 Texas artists interpreting the events surrounding the 2008 elections. Nathaniel Donnett contributes Indigestion, shredded books stabbed with eating utensils and placed atop a spinning phonograph, and Feast, an "American pie" made of cardboard and dollar bills. Tracy Hicks offers up Declaration, in which a copy of the Constitution is smeared with blood and "frozen in ice" (it's actually glass). Wayne Gilbert's Stars and Stripes Forever uses unclaimed ashes from funeral homes to create the American flag. And Alejandro Diaz will show his well-known text-based pieces, cardboard signs with phrases written on them in magic marker, including Mexican Wallpaper. See how these and other artists (including Houston Press contributor Kelly Klaasmeyer) view this monumental moment, and stick around to see how/if things will change: Closing reception is on election night, Tuesday, November 4
ArtsHouston Magazine Art Review for Nathaniel Donnett's "The Greatest Store That Never Sold Installation"
June 2, 2008
Project Row Houses
Nathaniel Donnett: The Greatest Store that Never Sold
By Tria Wood
A ghostly sense of surreality echoes through the installation The Greatest Store that Never Sold. Except for a stack of shopping carts in one corner and a pile of books along one wall, the space is swathed in white. Thus, the elements of the installation slowly reveal themselves to the viewer, forms and faint colors emerging to hint at narrative threads. Donnett’s choice of white, which permeates the space, in itself invokes several layers of meaning. While this expanse of white might be interpreted as heavenly, it just as easily invokes images of a void. It’s also hard not to read it in terms of race as well; the whitewashing effect of one culture upon others. However, white may just as easily be a blank canvas, an opportunity to create. Donnett’s subject matter is ambitious, addressing personal stories, community, literacy, consumerism, poverty and social justice.
The installation is roughly configured in the manner of a store, with lightbox shelves displaying various objects—some already white, some constructed of stiffly laquered white cloth, and some found items that have been shrinkwrapped and painted. Items as varied as...
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