As I peer through the large glass window of the new one-room solo installation by artist Fawn Rogers, my eyes scan the dozens of small, colorful paintings that pack the walls from floor to ceiling. Some feature mangled automobiles, cigarette-smoking monkeys and ironic cake icing messages, while others offer glimpses of pure nature: rare avian species, bare feet on lush lawns and adorable copulating ducks. Oh, but there’s also the benevolent Dalai Lama, and how about that close-up of grill-capped teeth saddled by sexy snarling lips? Seemingly dissimilar, these images come across like hyper, comic and wanton flashes of late-night television channel surfing—a place where we relinquish our consciousness and will to the oblivion of shock-value programming. Together, in this small white space, I wonder what they mean. I take it all in and pause.
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Then, I approach the doorway to the gallery’s [ROOM] space entrance, lowering my gaze to a dense carpet of living, green sod that runs from corner to corner. An unavoidable, center-seated, large furry chess set, entitled R.I.P., now grabs my strict attention. Hand-hewn, patinaed bronze statues of extinct animals act as playing pieces on top of the board, where the faults and follies of humankind are played out by the very victims of our assault against the planet. Luckily, in this safe space, we’re offered a mere game to play, helping us make light—and maybe gain a small semblance of control—of the woes that add up to the inevitable burden of heavy consumerist life as we know it.
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When I ask Rogers, whose show “Everything is Sacred, Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious, Nothing is Sacred” closes soon at L.A.’s Make Room, about what chess means to her, she mentions dominance and conquest and tells me she was inspired by the works of Jake and Dinos Chapman and Rachel Whiteread… as well as soap chess boards made in prisons.
Dominance, triumph, subjugation, conquest. Whatever happened to strategy—or fun, for that matter? How do we look at games today? I remember a few years ago reading an often-misattributed quote, “Life is just like a game. First, you have to learn the rules of the game. And then play it better than anyone else.” Playing the game of life ‘better than anyone else’ is perhaps the problem. Why? Because we should be in it together reasoning through conflict and attaining harmony, instead of competing for space in the zero-sum fallacy. Of course, our lives can be........