Kent Dorn, ‘Remains’ and Jennifer Sullivan, ‘One-Week Walden’
Many young artists these days seem to be haunted by the legacy of their parents’ — and now grandparents’ — hippie revolution. Some, like the group Assume Vivid Astro Focus, try to keep the tie-dyed euphoria of the ’60s alive. Others, like the painter Kent Dorn and the video performance artist Jennifer Sullivan, who are perfectly matched in this affecting show, obliquely and sadly reflect on the lingering memories of those bygone days.
In her charmingly slight, bittersweet video “One-Week Walden,” the winsome Ms. Sullivan narrates her attempt to emulate Thoreau with a childlike voice. That meant a week in a popup camper in the weedy far end of her father’s suburban backyard. Nicely understated and deadpan funny, Ms. Sullivan’s video is a canny satire of foolishly romantic, extendedadolescent narcissism.
Mr. Dorn’s painted scenes of feral youth in forest settings similarly evoke baffled nostalgia for back-to-nature counterculturalism. Color is muted, creating a dank, gloomy atmosphere that dims the feebly glowing sun. Broad areas of the paintings are rendered in watercolorlike staining, while selected parts are built up into crusty, greasy, absurdly thick impasto. The image of an abandoned, broken-down van titled “Van/Hideaway 2” suggests that we are closer to the world of “Kids,” Larry Clark’s mordant paean to juvenile delinquency, than that of “Woodstock.” It is a mental landscape of loss and repressed grief where the promises of yesteryear hang in the air like fading echoes. One painting depicts a rustic signboard bearing spray-painted letters. They spell, fittingly, “The End.”
