Art
Best in Show
Johnston Foster at Rare
By R.C. Baker
Tuesday, September 23rd 2008
Johnston Foster
When you enter the gallery, you might feel like Frankenstein's monster in a '30s horror flick—angry villagers with torches and pitchforks crowd the entrance. The 50-plus figures of Mob Deep (2008) are all about waist-high and crafted from styrofoam, trash cans, mop heads, and other detritus. In the rear space, Foster shifts scale and mood in an eight-foot-long sculpture of a thrashing cockfight fashioned from shredded plastic trash cans and a five-and-a-half-foot-high human heart fabricated from discarded doormats and auto parts. Such sad-sack materials leaven poignancy into the visceral spirit of violence, passion, and pain. Rare, 521 W 26th, 212-268-1520. Through October 4.
