Violaine Boutet de Monvel

Art writer & translator | Lecturer & PhD candidate

Reena Spaulings

Exhibition review published in ArtReview (London), no. 26, October 2008, p. 165.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, a popular American sitcom starring Larry David – writer and executive producer of the even more popular Seinfield – playing himself, or to be more precise, playing an exaggerated version of his bipolar self, as a writer and a producer, is some kind of reference for the exhibition “Courbet Your Enthusiasm”, at Chantal Crousel, starring a consortium of dealer(s) and artist(s) operating under the brand name and pen name of Reena Spaulings.

In fact, Reena Spaulings is the name of a gallery, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, opened in 2004 in New York City by John Kelsey and Emily Sundblad. The gallery was named after the main protagonist of an eponymous book coauthored by the members of international collective Bernadette Corporation (which happens to be represented by the gallery). John Kelsey and Emily Sundblad are also the primary instigators of fictional artist Reena Spaulings. For the record, Reena Spaulings Fine Art doesn’t represent Reena Spaulings for the two are inseparable. The dealer is the artist, vice versa. Some artists that the gallery actually represents may take part now and then in giving Reena Spaulings (pen and brand) a body of work, and rather than an actual touch – which is of no importance since it is as diverse as there are potential contributors to it – an ironical spirit.

The ensemble of works exhibited at Chantal Crousel (all 2008) includes a lot of trash (literally) and derision, and many (awful) paintings of flowers so as to celebrate Reena Spaulings’ bipolar identity. The gallery’s walls are dressed up with recent offspring of Enigmas, an ongoing series since 2005 of stained tablecloths stretched on the walls like paintings, the dirty remains of past openings and dinners, whose hosts are always designated in the titles (Art Forum, Brooklyn Museum, etc.). A few paintings cynically revisit genres – like still life in Nature Morte Vivante, depicting a dish of oysters (that are eaten alive, as we know) – or past schools like pointillism in the series Dans la rue, New Museum (pointillist representations of the New Museum in New York). Finally, two light boxes have pride of place in the middle of the gallery’s floor. The first, Courbet Your Enthusiasm (AFA) illuminates a random photograph of an artistic gathering scanned from the book Colin De Land: American Fine Arts, about the dealer Colin De Land, who passed away in 2003 and was known for his ambivalence of the art market. The second, Danica, illuminates the scan of an autographed photo of the American female racecar driver Danica Patrick – it is an image of pride and battle.

Then, what is Reena Spaulings’ battle ? Is it even a battle or a cynical experiment in order to exploit and celebrate the superficiality of a scheme that gives more importance to the money value than the quality of a work? While mocking the art market tandem of dealer and artist by unifying them completely, Reena Spaulings never attempts to redifine the market rules. How far can the farce go ?