‘The Sultans Played Creole’
Champion's new group show hasn't the grandeur or vision of its previous exhibits
Reviewed by Wayne Alan Brenner, Fri., April 29, 2011
'The Sultans Played Creole'
Champion Gallery, 800 Brazos
Through May 28
"Success is not a finite resource," as Jamie Wieck points out in his recent "The 50 Things Every Graphic Design Student Should Know," and you can bet your favorite tube of Grumbacher that it goes double for what we're still calling the fine(r) arts.
There's no zero-sum game going on whereby one artist must lose because some other artist wins. And what does "winning," what does "success" even mean in that more rarefied field, other than the artists' own feelings of satisfaction derived from having thoroughly expressed what they've been striving to express?
We'd like to believe it's not about money. We'd like to believe it's not about fame. We'd like to believe it's not about some critic's response. We'd like to believe art is honestly beyond all that. We'd like to believe that – I'd like to believe that, even as I walk away from the latest show at Downtown's Champion Gallery, feeling pretty meh about "The Sultans Played Creole," the exhibition currently occupying the venue.
James Cope of Dallas' Goss-Michael Foundation is the curator of this collection, featuring work by Kadar Brock, Branton Ellerbee, Nick Mathis, Cody Poole, Caris Reid, Amy Revier, and Marjorie Schwarz. Cope must certainly regard his choices as being examples of what's succeeded as art, just as he must have a deeper knowledge of art history, a sweeter pedigree in the field, than your reviewer here. But, whillikers, the paintings and arranged objects at Champion right now brought nothing new or interesting or impressive to my head or heart, especially nothing in the same universe as the sense of grandeur and delightfully obsessive illustrated vision that Champion's previous show – the "Animal Again" of Jules Buck Jones – provided.
You could go, of course; you could judge for yourself and let me know of any dissenting opinion? That'd be a favor to the conversation, as it's called. Sonia Dutton, the gallery's owner, did a similar favor right before I left: She pointed out a video show, "QNTV," staged in Champion but separate from the "Creole" exhibit.
So I sat and watched a group of music videos – eclectic, delightful, jarring, vivid, curated by Rachel Adams and Zoë Taleporos – of which one is now one of my all-time favorite videos. "Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror" by Mark Locke and Jeffrey Lewis, appropriately enough, is about the whole question of artistic success, about why people might make art at all, and it's (besides a work of art itself, besides howlingly funny) a powerful addition to the conversation.
Otherwise, I'm looking forward to what Champion Gallery's next show will have to say; but "The Sultans Played Creole" wasn't, ah, wasn't talking my language at all.
