THE Magazine - Dallas / Forthworth

At first glance, the works of Scandanavian artists Margret H. Blondal and Lars Laumann don't seem to complement one another. Ms. Blondal's installation pieces are rife with found objects, many of them on the unattractive side. And Mr. Laumann, a videographer, mines pop culture for inspiration. Yet they do share something aside from their relative geographic backgrounds; like many artists, Ms. Blondal and Mr. Laumann seek to find meaning in the randomness of life.
Ms. Blondal's piece was precariously mounted in the gallery space. In Out Out Out of Sight, which consists of wood sticks, green latex gloves, and rubbery, balloon-like materials, space is at a premium. The viewer becomes inherently a part of the experience since the work takes up a large portion of the gallery. A deflated green exercise ball slumps in one area and another multicolored one hangs suspended by a cord. Ms. Blondal is interested in spatial elements and how one can derive meaning from seemingly unrelated materials. Her work, ambiguous in aim, is nonetheless provoking in scope.
Mr. Laumann's video works are circumspect exercises in scholarly detective work. In Berlinmuren, a video nearly 25 minutes in length, a woman's affinity for the Berlin Wall is documented to ill-effects. The subject, an "object-sexual," is sexually attracted to the iconic structure. The resulting video is head-scratching and highly irrelevant. Two other undertakings make up for it. In Morissey Foretelling the Death of Diana, the artist states his case for one of the weirdest Internet rumors of recent memory, that Morissey and his band, The Smiths, predicted the death of Princess Diana through lyrics from their 1986 album The Queen Is Dead. The video is shown in English and in Spanish, where pop star Morissey apparently has a "huge Latino following," according to a wall text. Among the sources cited in this conspiracy theory are Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick; the musician Moby; and the 1997 Jodie Foster movie Contact. Needless to say, it's a weird theory and even stranger video. Mr. Laumann once again focuses on Princess Diana in Transport Deaths, a 40-minute ode to the paparazzi and Diana's quest to elude them. Both videos are haunting in concept if not conceptually rancid. Finally, in Swedish Bookstore, the artist perhaps references one of the most random artistic influences of all time: the 1984 Val Kilmer spy spoof movie Top Secret. Mr. Laumann's film plays one part of the movie in a loop, the infamous backwards bookstore scene. It's a fitting metaphor for this show, which makes the mind somersault in a discombobulated way.

The work of Andy Warhol is universally recognized, if not collectively understood. While he was alive -- and since his death in the late '80s -- there have been differing opinions about his output. People often flex judgment about his process, decrying his use of models, Polaroids, or even Campbell Soup cans. Love or hate Warhol, there's no mistake he left a legacy, and it's that thought that is the thesis of a new show at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts.
In Warhol and the Shared Subject, curator Gavin Morrison seeks to address the Warhol effect by juxtaposing some of the artist's work with new works by four international artists: Rineke Dijkstra, Douglas Gordon, CS Leigh, and Tony Scherman. The artists vary from virtual Warhol disciple Scherman to the obtuse filmmaker Leigh. Dijkstra and Gordon fall somewhere in the middle. Clearly, all were influenced by Warhol and his iconic work.
Mr. Scherman's portraits employ cropping effects, yielding a photographic bent to the work; his use of heat sources applied to the paint grant the subjects an otherworldly feel, such as in Lincoln as Himself. The figures in his work are blurred and disconnected, in a sense.
So, too, are the subjects in Ms. Dijkstra's entry in the exhibit, the two-channel video projection The Buzz Club, Liverpool, England/Mysteryworld, Zaandam, Netherlands. A veritable parade of young people, or "teens on the brink of adulthood," the work offers a look, literally behind the scenes, of two clubs in Europe in the late '90s and the somewhat weirdo personas that existed there. On the right screen, a gum-smacking brunette alternately looks at the camera, then looks off-stage, uneasy and self-conscious. A young couple on the other screen begin to kiss while another girl, this time with a smidge more of confidence, begins to dance rhapsodically to the music. Who are these kids? Somewhat mythical in context, they existed more than ten years ago in Europe. More importantly, where are they now?
Mr. Gordon's work uses appropriated images, such as that of Marilyn Monroe. The series You + Me After the Factory includes mirrors, so that the viewer sees herself; they are a mixed bag. And Mr. Leigh's room installation of posters, Polaroids, and a video monitor is an offshoot of his most recent film, See You at Regis Debray, about the fugitive Andreas Baader. Eerie and foreboding, the piece might come the closest to the central Warholian theme of marginalized identity.