Gary Falk’s window achieved presence through what was absent from the Franklin Furnace exhibition: a good public position (opposite a bus stop on East 14th Street, near Fifth Avenue); a bold, declarative manner, assuring instant readability; and an uncomplicated message, existing as much for the world of life as for that of art. Falk gave one neither informational nor epistemological overload—he fetishized neither his information nor its manner of presentation. He showed a rabbit chasing a carrot attached to it, a ring with an “explosive” diamond, and, on the window glass itself, a chair superimposed on a house. All was in schematic outline, black and white, except for the carrot-colored carrot and the darker, pumpkin-colored house. I saw the work during the day and at night; it was equally effective, equally noticed by passersby. It held one’s attention long enough for one to absorb its message; it created a reflective pause in the midst of the street turmoil—a break in everydayness. The question is whether this is enough to make fast-moving New Yorkers realize that they’re the rabbits in the carrot-chasing trap, that their lives are wrapped up in—reducible to—the pursuit of the symbolic brass ring, and that, on the street, they are unconsciously eager for the comforts of home, the American dream home on their inner horizons.
Falk’s power is that he tampers with the collective unconscious—reaches it through an “eventful” abstractness verging on the cartoony, but, through its window displacement and jumpy methods, getting on one’s nerves. His images embody the dreams of daily desire, bringing the casual spectator to an easy self-consciousness about his or her condition. From this, inwardly pursued, the images can become demonstrations of devastating limitation; this is their criticality, their subversiveness. They guilelessly effect an amused self-recognition or a disturbing self-destruction, can be read both as lame-duck comments on the obvious and as aggressive ironies. The point is this: where much of the Franklin Furnace material is self-consciously intellectual, Falk’s piece accepted its public, transient role with good grace. It wasn’t looking to make a lasting impact, to revolutionize the world; it wasn’t absolutist or categorical in its demands. It accepted the casualness of its own condition and so could have some outreach and effect. It didn’t need an art-world destiny as compensation for its communicative failings. This made it admirably “realistic.”
—Donald Kuspit
