Nicolas Lobo: Gum, Dropped Marlborough Chelsea December 15, 2011-January 14, 2012, New York: by craniv boyd.

Nicolas Lobo: Gum, Dropped Marlborough Chelsea December 15, 2011-January 14, 2012, New York: by craniv boyd. 

A one person presentation of an artist based in Miami, in New york city. Nicolas Lobo, at Marlborough Chelsea, was a show case that tendered divergent means of art making. a singular video work, in a darkened gallery room, and compact disks, micro-waved adjusted with the hand of the artist, and displayed at average adult eye level, wall mounted. 

The compact disks had been baked and painted. The artwork is an urbane angle on the mundane life of suburbia. The brilliant colors of the spectrum, on a piece of technology, intentionally destroyed, has juvenile over tones. Teenagers seem like unreasonable people that would fry a music collection in a microwave oven. Nicolas Lobo adds artist to the list of a contrary personality that would bake your tunes. With the aid of another domestic technology Lobo makes inappropriate usage of an appropriate verb applicable to compact discs: to burn, i.e. to record or author a data disc on a computer. The series of Microwaved CD Pen Tests, 2011, are all in fact burned compact discs of an artists work, but the literal burning via oven, renders the discs objects for retinal contemplation only, unreadable by any laser scanner device that could decode whatever data they held. 

In concert with these tastefully obdurate anti technological creations, hung on pristine white walls, are fragments of stone tablets leaned against the gallery walls. This leaning of marble or granite fragments, stones which appear ready for insertion as a table top or kitchen counter top, are art. This art is blithe, therefore has the hallmarks of youth. These processed stones, which are more time honored artistic materials, have a more off-hand treatment than, the compact discs that shared the same room. Making one thing clear: as an artist Mr. Lobo, is more familiar with what, and how, to treat a current art material like plastic, rather than a more classical one of stone. 

The video art piece, is a work with a recording from a fixed camera angle, of a room with a mysterious appearance. There is little in the way of clues to tell viewers what the function of this space is, save for a rickety table with assorted containers with varied colors. A figure in a white coverall plastic suit, enters frame, bearing what has all appearances of a fire extinguisher. Pensive, tentative, predatory movements: as the figure ambles towards the wall. When suddenly, grey purple paint issues forth, from the canister, the figure holds. The suspense is allayed when the cathartic moment of a large stream of paint hits the wall. That uninterrupted paint stream, crossing horizontal lines, back and forth, back and forth. Exit person in white protective clothing. What is left to see is the paint, dripping down, and with time, drying. This is an art work that shows much of what the endeavors of a young artist can entail. Isolation, an abrupt idea, creative detonation, then waiting for paint to dry, or dust to clear the air, and an end product that looks derivative, hence undesirable. However the freshness and ease of this video work, overshadows the inhibited bijou of singed plastic and relaxing marble in the other rooms. by craniv boyd.