NEW YORK CHRIS LIPOMI If a Warhol afficianado suddenly felt an urge to 'go primitive' and turned his backyard into a repository of contemporary and neolithic totems, it would probably look something like Chirs Lipomi's Webik: Okiri Wakipi at Renwick Gallery in New York. Amidst a maze of wooden scaffolding, an odd assortment of stuffed animals, inflatable Incredible Hulks and impaled turtle shells mingle with an erased Brillo box, a caged banana and multiple reproductions of the the famous Venus of Willendorf. With Additional references to Basquiat, Yves Klein and A.R Penck, sprinkled with a liberal amount of hoses and other seemingly incongruous objects, Lipomi drives his spear into preconceived notions of art and merit, shatering categories and hierachies along the way. Placed side-to-side, contemporary art's seminal works and pieces bearing all the accoutrements of what the west considers 'exotic', reveal their similar devotional and fetishistic qualities. Its thought provoking, it's witty and it makes you want more.



- Isabelle Dupuis



FlashArt, January February 2008 p.85