Beverly Rayner
Patrick Wilson
Alicia Escott
Through May 27 - Post Haste at MacArthur B Arthur. One of my secret histories is that I spent years as an avid stamp collector and still have binders and binders full of philatelic wonders stashed away somewhere. I have also been a faithful pen pal to many individuals and still love to send and receive letters in the mail. I experience genuine melancholy every time I hear the U.S. Postal Service is struggling to survive. So I very much appreciate the work Jayna Swartzman has gathered for this group show, each piece commenting in its own way on an institution that until the advent of email was just that, an institution. Patrick Wilson built his own post box, fitted it with a infra-red camera, and sent it via DHL from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The photographs in the exhibition were taken by the box completely free of any human intervention, and the loading docks and warehouses it captured are eerie in their beauty. Alicia Escott's Love Letter video series in which she sends terms of endearment to a Neanderthal, to a Bengal tiger, to a Brontimerus Macintoshi have a devastating intimacy that makes the viewer pure voyeur. Meanwhile Calcagno Cullen invites you to sit down at an old Smith-Corona typewriter (the exact same one my dad had in his office I might add) and compose a letter to a random person in the New York phone book. Christopher Wood, I hope you like the words you get from me.
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