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review: New York Times

ART IN REVIEW; 'Face Off'
By HOLLAND COTTER
 Ronald Feldman Fine Arts  31 Mercer Street, SoHo  Through tomorrow
This skillfully selected roundup of political art was intended to coincide with the recent presidential election, so some of the work is old news now. We won't, for example, be hearing John Ashcroft croon inspirational songs anymore, as he does on an Art Mob tape here. And Jessica Craig-Martin's wicked, believe-it-or-not photos of the Republican National Convention are ready for the historical archives.
Most of the rest of the material, though, has continuing pertinence, from Bjorn Melhus's ''In Beautiful Sunny Guantánamo Bay,'' an audio piece with a rapping Donald H. Rumsfeld; to a Rico Gatson video in which the real hip-hop star Mos Def takes on AIDS and oil prices; to Joe Wezorek's mosaic image of President Bush pieced together from portraits of 960 members of the armed services killed in Iraq as of April 2004.
Add paintings by Ellen Levy about the embattled environment, Richard Ross's photographs of immigrant detention centers, images of never-random violence by Eric Heist, Sterling Ruby and Michael Waugh, and a skeptical vision of youthful rebellion circa 2004 by the collective Paper Rad, and you're out of the past, into the present, and almost certainly into the future. HOLLAND COTTER
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Friday, November 26, 2004

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