Nightmerica, was a two-person exhibition by Winnie van der Rijn and Ryan Bock (aka Bockhaus) that opened on Friday, November 1st and closed Sunday November, 3rd – capturing the fleeting Halloween surreality and lingering pre-election tension in the unseasonably warm air. Nights earlier, I streamed a Republican presidential rally at Madison Square Garden from my Fire Stick, wincing as a performer in what looked like a faded fluorescent rubber mask gestured theatrically from a podium inside a ring emblazoned with huge five-pointed stars and bold patriotic colors. That circus of modern politics was willfully resurrected before my eyes inside Mooncalf, Manhattan’s latest popup art space, behind spray-painted red and white blinds. A living room-shaped floor plan was crammed with satirical puppets and vintage frayed American Flags. Most everything was rigged up with pull strings to either jingle the limbs of Bock’s ironic America-dolls or turn Rijn’s modified Old Glories into theater curtains. Audience participation was gently encouraged amidst this nationalism-branded artshow-cum-sideshow worthy of Coney Island or even Graceland.
All Photos Courtesy of Roman Dean.
Having some kind of control over these politically loaded art objects seemed the main point, especially since inside the gallery I found myself contemplating the exact day and time I will “get out to vote” for the only not-insane presidential option within an electoral system which renders my vote functionally symbolic. Rijn’s contributions to the exhibition are composed entirely of antique American Flags sourced from family friends or Etsy. She has taken these naturally tattered pieces of fabric and either “reinforced” their holes with careful stitching, as in the works “Frayed” or “War Torn”, or redesigned them, like in the works “Re United” or “Fallen”. Both of these artistic processes arrest back some authorship from the partisan branding apparatuses that have run roughshod with the ole’ Stars and Stripes. Rijn grew up in a military family, living on bases around the country, a history which complicates her leftist suspicion of the Star-Spangled Banner; encouraging her to find ways of materially reformatting it.
Similarly, Bock’s kinetic works like “Lamenting Lady Liberty”, “Uncle Sam”, and “Piggy Policeman” have been fashioned with cords dangling between their legs, allowing anyone to casually play with these American archetypes of power like old toys at an antique roadshow. In a visually striking installation decision, Bock’s “Jesus on the Cross” has been mounted atop one of Rijn’s more sensitive works, “Frayed”. Although they are both historically loaded images, this stark superposition of religious and political brand identity took me back in time hardly at all. We exist in a present where the sacred and the State have been value-packaged as inseparable consumer goods. The more brightly colored Jesus is the better I can find him in the wilderness of my obliterated attention span. The more worn down and faded the flag the better I can reimagine an authentic American past suited to my ideology. As I made my way back through the red and white blinds onto the dark street, what stuck in my mind was something Luke Ivy Price (an artist who co-runs Mooncalf and designed all the pull strings hot on a case of PBRs the night before) suggested to me as Nightmerica’s subtitle: “Nationalism, what is it and where can I buy some?”
Nightmerica, Nov 1 – Nov 3, 2024 at Mooncalf / 332 E 4th Street, New York, NY
Jan Dickey is a painter, writer, and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (2017) and a BFA from the University of Delaware (2009). Dickey has attended several artist residencies, including the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts in New Berlin, NY (2023); ARTnSHELTER in Tokyo, Japan (2019); the Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center in Nebraska City, NE (2018); and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT (2017). His solo exhibition, Passing Through, held at D.D.D.D. in NYC (Spring 2023), was reviewed in Two Coats of Paint under the title Jan Dickey: Both Sides Now. In 2024, he curated The Corner Show at D.D.D.D. (New York, NY) and created a site-specific installation, The Generations, at Bob’s Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Dickey has contributed reviews and interviews to Arte Fuse and Whitehot Magazine.