ART REVIEWS : Leibowitz Seeks Success Through Failure

Cary S. Leibowitz is a loser. At least, that is the persona advanced in the work of the New York-based artist, who also goes by the descriptive nickname Candyass. His local debut exhibition at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica shows Leibowitz isn’t really a loser, though. As an artist he’s just not that bad--or good.

The bulk of Leibowitz’s work consists of ordinary domestic objects, printed with adolescent, woe-is-me whinings. There are china plates (“The only thing more superficial than my work is me”), collegiate banners (“Drop Dead!”), a rug (“There are two things I need to watch for the rest of my life: my weight and my racism”), dashboard sunscreens (“Please don’t steal my radio, I’m queer”) and more. Framed word-paintings honor “Fat” and “Ugly.”

Leibowitz’s response to the success-mad art-scene of the 1980s has been to try to succeed through an appeal to abject failure. Shame, embarrassment and humiliation have lately been the subjects of incisive explorations by several important artists and writers, including Cady Noland, Mike Kelley and Dennis Cooper. Leibowitz’s art is the soft-core version of their hard-core rigor. It doesn’t break your heart, but neither do you laugh. Mostly, you just stare.

The art seems crafted to occupy foolproof territory: If you adore his work, Leibowitz wins; if you’re revolted--well, woe-is-he, the Candyass has won again. But adoration and revulsion are responses far too potent to be generated by this lukewarm stuff. Indifference, it turns out, is the best revenge.

* Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 1454 5th St., Santa Monica, (213) 451-3733, to April 29. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Collision Course: Attention shoppers! The Store Show at Richard/Bennett Gallery represents a collision between the 1980s commodity fetish for art and the recessionary wobbling of the art market in the 1990s. The gallery has been transformed from white-walled showplace to ordinary knickknack shop--more La Brea Circus or Pic ‘n Save than Nieman-Marcus--and nothing on view costs more than $500, with most going far below $100. (For armchair shoppers, a mail-order catalogue is available.) Most are multiples, many of them commissioned for the show.

Clothing racks are hung with T-shirts, hand-painted denim jackets and a seasonal line of prison-like work shirts (Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring are stenciled over the pockets, in true institutional style) by Richard Pettibon, Manuel Ocampo and Jamey Garza, respectively. Cardboard shelves are lined with decoupage-rocks (Brian Kimball), glass jars containing the “essences” of famous artists (John Galt), postcards printed on wood blocks (Joseph Beuys), Pop paper plates (Roy Lichtenstein), non-functional casts of a television remote control in colored Lucite (Chris Wilder) and survival flashlights cobbled together from batteries, wire, electrical tape and plumber’s helpers (Luciano Perna).

This last suggests the most interesting undercurrent of the exhibition, which is otherwise largely a passing amusement. Perna’s is a wry, low-budget take on the tenuous--and tenacious--durability of artistic illumination in the clogged circumstances of the present. Other artists in the show are more blunt. Dominica Salvatore has printed the word “Art” on a stack of doormats; for $26.39, you’re invited to take one home and wipe your feet. More resonantly, Leonard Seagal is selling shoeshine kits, complete with a guarantee that he will come to your home and buff those boots to a high sheen. The vulgar image of the artist as collector’s bootblack is hard to shake.

* Richard/Bennett Gallery, 830 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 962-8006, to May 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays.