LISA KERESZI – THE PARTY’S OVER
2012-06-04Continuing her investigation of escapist and fantastical spaces, Kereszi has trained her eye on the gritty, abandoned sites of former amusement parks, strip clubs, theaters, and other entertainment locales. The works offer subtle visual hints of a once happier existence, using windows and reflections, for example, as metaphorical portals to escape a reality of decay.
Though subdued in tone and content, the work is also a celebration of the magic of the purely photographic. Reactive, though quiet, Kereszi’s photos are not pre-conceived or planned out, but rather genuine, instinctive responses to strange, silent and secret beauty. In Topless bar reflected in puddle, Doylestown, PA, Kereszi frames a sliver of the defunct club’s sign in a parking lot puddle, which forms the shape of an arrow and reflects the club’s essential message, Topless Motel Bar Food. The building’s A-frame roof and chimney suggest that this is a former home converted to a strip club, another subtle reminder of the distressed conditions to which Kereszi lends her poetic sensibility.
Elsewhere, Kereszi’s compositions are more direct in their message, as in the show’s title image, The Party’s Over, Disco ball in box, CT, which peers down upon a shabby cardboard box containing a disco ball, no longer spinning overhead, and therefore bereft of its former power to entice. And Plastic Shark in lake behind sports bar, Pocono Mountains, PA, which reveals a comically placed shark head jutting out of shallow water, its toothy mouth agape, a sad, static reminder of a once popular recreational playground cast aside.
Opposite – Topless bar reflected in puddle, Pennsylvania, 2010
Exhibition runs through till July 6th, 2012
Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor
New York
NY
10011
