14 Sep 2017

Anthony Palocci Jr.: It Can't Rain All The Time

How's Howard?

Reviewed by David Curcio

Snooze, a tight painting of an alarm clock reading 6:03, commences Anthony Palocci's group of thirteen paintings. Is that 6:03 AM or PM? It feels either too early or too late. This bit of agita followed me as I wended around the walls of How’s Howard?’s show of Palocci's 11x15 gouaches. Stand with a piece for a minute, and an attachment can develop quickly. There's a private, mutual understanding between the viewer and what we know is just an object. But is it a bond with painting as object, or is it the object that’s painted? It's tense. AM or PM?

A car door. A gun, clip and ammo. A stay-tab on a beer. An autobiographical bar of soap. How about the gun? Do we care? Each painting is a question, but the answer doesn’t matter. We can recognize them as familiar. We don't pretend to know just what they mean but we're already pals. I finally found myself lost in a domed landscape of pointed metal pyramids surrounding a cylinder glowing like an oracle. What is it?