I am kicking myself hard for having missed Katya Bonnenfant's recent installation at Yerba Buena, especially after having seen her current show at Haines Gallery this week. At Yerba Buena she took over the Viewing Corridor on the second floor, filling the entire wall with a dense tapestry of warring figures, wooden sculptures, and animations. The complementary exhibition at Haines is composed of small individual gouache studies for the Yerba Buena show containing just a few figures each, but the pieces have still been arranged on the walls in a loose narrative, the masked multi-cultural warriors raping and pillaging as they go. Meanwhile the colorful sculptures from the Yerba Buena wall have been spilled across two plinths in the center of the Haines floor, while a small camera projects the animation abstraction belong to all of us with its ceaselessly morphing logos directly onto one of Bonnenfant's paintings. Bonnenfant works under the name the old boys' club, and with her references to pop culture and corporate signifiers she does seem to be questioning our contemporary obsessions with escapist entertainment and mass consumption. However with no clear lines drawn in her battle and no obvious distinction between the good guys and the bad she keeps the issues refreshingly complex, and among some of the more disturbing scenes there are laugh-out-loud moments too. Bonnenfant's art is a vibrant encapsulation of our current consciousness.
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