Michael St. John
Nightmares of Summer
Diane Arbus, Abel Auer, Robert Beck, Hans Bellmer, Ann Craven, Steve DiBenedetto,
Francesca DiMattio,Carroll Dunham, Barnaby Furnas, Nils Karsten, Marilyn Minter,
Anders Petersen, Jon Plypchuk, Robert Russell, Michael St. John
June 10 through July 14, 2006

Nightmares of Summer
R.C. Baker
June 20, 2006

Francesca DiMattio's paintings of sailing vessels are as abject and dark as the Flying Dutchman—Ship Wreck (2006) is a collision of textures, the thick acrylic paint having been forced through coarse screens. Diane Arbus's 1965 photo of a nudist family contrasts sagging jowls and rolls of pale flesh with horn-rimmed glasses and the sharp diagonals of some Detroit behemoth's tail fin. Michael St. John's hysterically deadpan collage, Dead Body Inside (2006), presents a photo of a decrepit, paint-peeling shack surrounded by knee-high weeds. Fourteen other artists from the last eighty years contribute to this descent into the season's langour.