Adam Pendleton:
Rendered in Black and Events Are
Four stars
iMOCA

In Pendleton’s Rendered in Black and Events Are, minimalism meets the postmodernist backlash against totalitarian qualities. “Muse and Druge (Rendered in Black)” contains all the telltale signs of modernity. Cool, black ceramic cubes, about a foot in diameter, are placed strategically about the gallery floor. Each cube is a form unto itself, but at the same time, each one plays a part in a larger organic structure. In addition, the cubes beckon the large-scale integration that modernism heralded (think assembly line). The strategic placement of the cubes invites the viewer to walk about and participate in a kind of performance. Across the gallery, you will find large-scale silk-screened canvases that contain words from various textual sources — the words are sandwiched together in no apparent order. The letters almost glow against the bland canvas as the artist’s appropriated words make poetry. In a true deconstructivist vein, the words thwart any frame of reference or assumptions the viewer makes. Finally, Pendleton’s silk screens entitled Events Are offer the viewer a small-scale contradiction in imagery. One small canvas features passenger trains en route, the tracks leap-frogging impossibly over other passenger trains and mountainsides. Through March 22; 317-63-iMOCA.