Monya Rowe Gallery
526 West 26th Street, Chelsea
Through Oct. 18
Larissa Bates wasn’t included in “Dargerism: Contemporary Artists andHenry Darge," now ending its run at the American Folk Art Museum, but she might as well have been. The “Lederhosen Boys” and “MotherMen” in her small ink-and-gouache paintings are guys-only versions of Darger’s impish, militant Vivian Girls.
In the derivative but beautifully described world of Ms. Bates’s paintings, male desire runs amok. In the “MotherMen” series, centaurlike creatures give birth in the woods. The “Lederhosen Boys,” young scamps with chubby limbs and blond curls, perform mysterious séances on rocky bluffs. The landscapes in most of these paintings are at least as interesting as the figures; their sources include Nicolas Poussin, the Northern Renaissance artist Joachim de Patinir and Persian miniatures. Paintings by the contemporary artist Hernan Bas, of dandyish young men in lush, windswept landscapes, also come to mind.
If the paintings combine these diverse influences, the large mixed-media installation in the center of the gallery teases them apart. A life-size, gold-painted plaster figure of a headless MotherMan and three smaller papier-mâché Lederhosen Boys flank a mirrored platform. Embedded in this structure is a video monitor showing highlights from wrestling matches, as well as actors costumed to look like characters from the paintings. This diagrammatic piece is a wrong turn in an otherwise compelling fantasy world. KAREN ROSENBERG
Image: MotherMen Wrestling in Washington Allston’s Desert Landscape, 2008, acryla gouache on canvas, 12 by 9 inches