Flashpoint

Buddy Bunting
Thom Heileson
Claire Johnson
Casey Keeler
Margie Livingston,
Kiki MacInnis
Bret Marion
Demi Raven
Samantha Scherer
Randy Wood
Jennifer Zwick

February 7 – 29, 2004
Reception / Saturday, February 7, 7–10pm

Flashpoint is a select survey showcasing recent work produced by the current members of SOIL, from subtle to high-voltage and everything in between.

Excerpted from a review by Suzanne Beal, ArtDish.com:

For any pyromaniacs out there, please put the kerosene back in the garage. Flashpoint, the current show at SOIL, makes good use of an ignition metaphor, without the potential havoc. Designed as a showcase for its associates, Flashpoint demonstrates the diversity of its members’ vision while remaining faithful to its cutting edge intentions. The individual works in the show push the limits of combustibility—while no work oversteps obvious boundaries, most toe the line in a daringly agreeable manner.

Claire Johnson’s Ecstatic States depicts the eventual erotic thrill— and as far as I know, artistically unexplored domain—of cutting (more clinically known as “selfinjurious behavior”). Randy Wood, inspired by visionary cartoonist Jim Woodring, has created dreamlike, foreboding scenes with watercolors of snakes and their premonitions of a leaping creature. Heileson’s 101 Sunsets race epileptically past, aggressively presenting the glibness of its subject matter through speed and repetition.

The flashpoint of turpentine is 95 F. That of linseed oil is 200 F. SOIL’s readiness to consider the flashpoint of art is at the core of this exhibit.