Post by Brent Burket
I have to say that Libby and Roberta almost never lead me astray. Now
that I think about it, you can pretty much take the “almost” out of that last sentence. So, when Libby forwarded me the announcement for Caleb Weintraub’s show, Cloudy with a Chance of Apocalypse, at Jack The Pelican Presents I knew that I’d be hopping the G train to Williamsburg.
Installation shot at Jack the Pelican of Caleb Weintraub’s show. All photos by Brent Burket.
More big Weintraub pictures. The artist works very large and very small, nothing in the middle. He’s extreme even in the scale he works in. [Ed. note: for posts on Caleb Weintraub’s show last year at Projects Gallery, see here and here.]
Weintraub’s paintings give new meaning to the word “youthquake”. With this group of wonderful and caustic paintings Weintraub gives our culture the smackdown it deserves for the way it extends our sense of entitlement way past our mother’s breast and into our adulthood.
Small works by Weintraub
Let’s face it. George Bush is our President. No matter who you voted for, he didn’t get there by accident, the sad reflection of our collective babyhood. I found this show cathartic, in the same way that I found Get Your War On when it first appeared. It’s an artist in contact with what we hate and what we continue to embrace anyway. We’re all idiots.
More small works by Caleb Weintraub
I’m worked up. A good sign.
In the back room I was in the middle of an eyeroll in reaction to Reed Barrow’s Meteor when This Morning I Woke up with a SoreThroat scared the bejesus out of me. Not because I was startled by it, but because it was so damn good, and got under my skin and into my head so quickly. I couldn’t stop looking at it, and it put into context the other two pieces. As campy as these works might look at first, in the end they’re hyper-real. And it ain’t pretty. Not a bad idea to bring your therapist.
I find that Jack The Pelican Presents can be a little hot and cold (Although I almost never miss a show.), but when they’re on they are ON. This is one of those times. This is the last weekend to see this pair of nightmares. Dream hard.
–Brent Burket blogs his fingers to the bone at Heart as Arena and at Creative Time blog. How he does this and keeps a full time job and his sanity we do not know but we’re in awe.
