For an artist's first major New York exhibition to be both a solo show and a career retrospective (of sorts) is a double coup that is virtually unheard of. However, Texas outsider artist (of sorts), James X. Nova, received just that, but not without limitations imposed. The limitations were that the show only lasted four days and that it was held not in an established gallery, but in an off-Broadway theater (even though it is technically located on Broadway); a venue not inappropriate for Mr. Nova, as it turns out. Unusual circumstances for a most unusual artist.
The show was held in conjunction with "Texas Trash: Stories of Gender and Class Struggle from the South," a collection of one-act plays written and performed by transplanted Texans, in which Nova also had a small, but startling role. Just as the one-act play in which he performed (he was the cast's token male member) was a tightwire walk of a parody of P.C. sensibilities, Nova's art and persona seem to walk a precipitous edge between seriousness and a lampoon of contemporary art world pretenses and prejudices.
As Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase was described as "an explosion in a shingle factory," the thirty-odd (mostly bricolage) works on display at the FUNY (pronounced "F-you-N-Y", but originally titled "NoMoPoMo" as in "No More Post-Modernism") show could accurately be described as an explosion in a garbage can. The artist deciphered his enematic works and titles for nearly everyone who attended, as he worked those in attendance like a politician on the campaign trail). Many of the pieces were composed (some entirely) with street debris, but reworked or combined in such ways that this was not immediately apparent. No paintings appeared in this show, although a few drawings and a number of computer art prints were included. Mr. Nova is seemingly not afflicted with, what critic Ken Johnson termed, "...that hobgoblin of little minds, consistency." While a great many of the pieces were quite visually arresting on their own, the interpretation of the lion's share was entirely dependent upon the titles and the voluminous program notes provided. Taken en masse, these produced a din of both cheap and quite intellectual puns, which can grate against the mind. But more often than not, they were entertaining.
With an oeuvre so diverse it is impossible to single out any signature pieces. The more memorable included "The City That Never Sweeps," a large tondo encrusted with layer upon layer of garbage collected from Manhattan sidewalks over the last three years. The piece, hideous from a distance, but containing a veritable cultural encyclopedia of contemporary New York, is upon close inspection, thoughtfully planned. Full of metaphor, ironic point-counterpoint, and social commentary, it is obviously a labor of hate. Bracketing the piece is a poem of fear and sensual assault composed of found text samples buried amidst the syringes, used condoms, crack vials, cigarette butts, bus transfers, and rubble from both the World Trade Center bombing and the decaying 69th Regiment Armory building, where Duchamp first exploded upon U.S. shores. The frequent invocation of Duchamp is not accidental, for Nova's art (and the satiric idiot savant persona which was on display when I attended) is imbued with the same dadaistic warp.
While most of the pieces are quite small, they carry a big stick. Subject matter ranges from censorship ("Contextual Determinism") to religion (including a metaphoric piece, "Agony & Ecstacy", obviously calculated to offend Christian sensibilities, and a series of anticlerical cartoons) to abortion ("Golden Fetus Award") to both local ("The View from Queens", a 3D diorama which when viewed with the left eye produces a different scene than when viewed with the right, get it?) and world ("Ultraserb Ethnic Cleansing Solution") politics, tributes to other artists ("Picabia Sauce", "John Cage Re/dismembered", "Miroir"), homelessness ("Opportunity Passover"), racism ("Slave New World Revisited"), and sexual mores ("Thought Control for Men"). Just when all this begins to get a bit heavy-handed, he breaks it up with absurdist constructions like the trophy head, "A Loony Rabbit," the high-cholesterol "Culinary Caveats," or a piece, which perhaps best sums up his art: a lovely colored pencil reproduction of apples from a trompe l'oeill by William Miller, but disturbingly titled "With Hidden Razor Blades." Like those apples, there is more than meets the eye in Mr. Nova's work. Hopefully, his next show will enjoy a more conventional run at a more visible gallery. However, I imagine that difficulty and rarity are factors which he enjoys being associated with.
James X. Nova is an artist who divides his life and time between fantasy and reality, bliss and misery, depression and self-loathing. He can be at once quirky, witty, challenging, and contrarian, amusing, infuriating, and provocative. Objectification of, manipulation of, even abuse of these polarizations can be discerned in his work. Yet there exists within many of his pieces a quiet satire. His body of work can best be categorized by what it is not. He is not a mythopoet. His works contain none of the polymorphous perversities of the surrealists, nor the visceral emotionalism of the AbEx's. Absent is the esthetic simplicity of the minimalists, as well as the coolness and detachment of most contemporary art. Some of his works (which he calls "combobs;" the etymology of his term lie with, what he perceived as, the root of 'discombobulate.') look like Pop Art but taste like Soviet propaganda posters. He strongly disdains the label ‘post-modern’, but there are the inescapable currents of irony and deconstruction. Only where the "pomos" -- as Mr. Nova calls them -- come off as nihilists, Nova’s art, a list of grievances which, when taken as a whole, can be read as a call to political action.
Celebrated New York artist Malcom Morley said recently, "Skill invites a lot of corruption." If this is true, then we can look forward to many more years of uncorrupted works flowing from the mind and hands of James X. Nova.
© 1997 jxnova@pipeline.com
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