Installation view of ‘Joe Bradley & Dan Colen: Epiphany’ at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Lenox Avenue. (Courtesy the artists and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise)
STILL FARTHER UPTOWN, at Gavin Brown’s Harlem outpost, is bro art (as an artist friend terms the work made by Mr. Prince and his progeny) from a younger set. There are just two works, one by Dan Colen and the other by Joe Bradley, and they are both huge—a key characteristic of the bro genre. The show is titled “Epiphany.” Mr. Bradley has painted a huge canvas with the word “jazz” in big white jazzy letters on a black background. Those already converted to his bracingly simplistic painting will swoon; skeptics will remain skeptical. In this case, when he’s clearly relishing a great time—a “jazz” painting in Harlem!—Mr. Bradley’s charisma is irresistible.
Mr. Colen presents a massive jumble of metal, roughly 10 feet tall, made of barbed wire, a fence, a gate and more. There is a basketball hoop in there too, as well as a large plastic Bart Simpson figure, a shredded T-shirt (“You’re not the boss of me,” it reads), a microwave and a garden hose. It looks like the remains of a neighborhood pummeled by Sandy, and you half expect to spot a body amid the tangle. But then you hear the birds chirping, live yellow ones that are part of the piece and feast on scattered feed, and it becomes a kind of sacred, if uncomfortably literal, shrine.
arusseth@observer.com