01 Dec 2017

Society in Upheaval

Beard and Weil Galleries, Wheaton College

Reviewed by David Curcio

"Society in Upheaval" features three Boston artists to whose work I have always been drawn. Yet much of it was made during the halcyon days before Trump, calling into question the show's political title.

The world is a shitshow on its best days, but we'd never know it from Edward Monovich's colorful, fully realized drawings where children wearing birds' and mammals' heads as hats gambol through sprinklers. His use of commercial imagery - candy wrappers, scratch tickets, corporate logos - gels with Karen Moss's intentionally flat collages culled from merciless mail circulars, a reminder of the nightmare of American consumerism. Raul Gonzalez's drawings, executed in his signature cartoon lines, speak in part to immigration, another national bone of contention. But at a moment when the most brilliant art falls under the lens of judgmental political scrutiny and the righteous fume over who is allowed to create what, the show does not feel political. Thank Christ for that.