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Priska C. Juschka Fine Art: Gabriel Jones - Somewhere on Time 06.

Comment: Here's a gallery that embraces garble. I'm slogging through the syllabic sludge harking back to those fifties jungle movies where the safari dude sinks into the quicksand and the last thing you see is that desperate outstretched hand disappear beneath the muck. I am fully aware of the extent to which they champion cerebralism here in meta-analytical Eastcoastland, but remember those delightful Nike folks and their exhortation to "Just Do It?" You can only maul the neocortical synapses for so long before the eyeballs roll back and the connection deconsummates. If the art's any good, step up, can the pretense, and alert the masses.

So OK. Gabriel Jones photographs single figures in landscapes-- indefinite, improbable, inert, perplexing, and they got me right where they want me-- wondering what just happened and/or what happens next. I whip out the syllabus, get slathered with blather, and suddenly I don't care anymore. For instance, "Regardless of the images being replete with implied action, Jones does not disclose his own parabolic vision, but rather allows both the model and viewer to construct a subjective interpretation of the scene they have become a part of." Make my day-- disclose your parabolic vision.

Then there's an installation by Jade Townsend that looks like some kinda prison where you enter an apparent interrogation room through a hole in an ersatz brick wall, a fenced razor-wired yard out back-- and it's consummately convincing, and again I'm right there, captured, questioned, about to spill my guts-- then I peruse the pretext, and huh? Like, for example, "The various elements that this installation is comprised of conjure up an array of associations from our surroundings and open a critical dialogue with our constructed systems of reality." I suppose this is a mildly convoluted way of saying the art means whatever you want it to mean. Duh.

Sorry-- you waifed me. Twice. But I like the art.