Art: The Enemy Show

Fiends forever

By Erika Yowell

On view at downtown's Dust Gallery, The Enemy Show is an ensemble exhibit of Las Vegas and Los Angeles artists ostensibly brought together by their interest in exposing the "enemy among us." Dust regular Carrie Jenkins and UNLV MFA student Jessica Starkey have joined forces to curate the show and, for their trouble, have made sure some of their own work is featured prominently.

And why shouldn't they? Newcomer Starkey's silkscreen-on-cap-sleeve-T-shirt called "The Score" exposes the enemy as the unending competition between fat girls and skinny girls. The shirt's message: Fat Girls 0, Skinny Girls 9. Or maybe the enemy is actually the godforsaken cap-sleeve T-shirt itself, which, in its entire history of existence, has never flattered a single wearer, fit or not.

Jenkins' enigmatic duet of works illustrates the before-and-after shots of an attempted seduction/purse snatching. "Hello Lover" and "Not So Fast Missy" incorporate jarring orange and magenta in a stop-motion look at one woman's unwelcome advance toward another. These two paintings, which feature dark-skinned figures, invite comparisons between Jenkins' hard-edged, stenciled technique and contemporary black artist Kara Walker's provocative paper silhouettes.

Los Angeleno Kelly Barrie contributes a pair of c-prints, including one that features an interior of a Las Vegas Strip hotel room. "East: Sleeping" provides a puzzle of sorts for the viewer familiar with the local area, who will be compelled to spend a few moments trying to figure out, by way of the hotel room's orientation and what is seen outside the window, which hotel interior it is. Or maybe that's just me.

Other interesting pieces include Sam Davis' pair of horizontal c-print photographs, "The Interloper" and "The Hunter," in which a toy robot holding a shark on a leash and a human dressed in a robot costume plunder menacingly through an unspoiled desert landscape. In Chad Brown's painting "Yours Truly," a businessman walks through a fluorescent-lit corridor, which is presumably seen through a window as indicated by the presence of several admirable, Richard Estes-like reflective effects.

While the work is diverse and, almost without exception, both technically and aesthetically sound, the press release says the work "celebrates the public execution of various manifestations of the enemy" is confounding, to say the least. The culprits are not all universally apparent, and the show could be perceived as too high-minded because a theme has been mysteriously ascribed to it. In all truth, the work itself is collectively strong enough to stand alone.