Ping Pong Gallery San Francisco, CA September - October 2007
ArtForum.com Critic's Pick review by Glen Helfand:
"By titling her solo exhibition after a classic campfire song,
“Make New Friends,” Amanda Curreri dares to swirl nerdy “Kumbaya” togetherness
with sculpture and socially engaged art. The results are cryptic and sweet,
depending on the number of viewers milling about the intimate venue—the more
the merrier. At the entrance to the show, Curreri has constructed a gateway of
thrift store–scavenged mirrors attached to an open wall of primary-colored
two-by-fours: One must quite literally pass through the looking glass to see
the show. The artist delineates the gallery space as a spare, sanctioned zone
that subtly reframes our perceptions of objects and interpersonal interactions.
On view are multiple vintage record players, of the portable 1970s type with
built-in plastic clamshell case; two of them are fitted with tall, seemingly
rickety legs. The turntables spin, but their arms hover just above the records;
the titular song, in fact, plays beneath a plywood platform, at a low volume,
an almost subliminal invitation for viewers to join hands and sing along. The
lyrics—“Make new friends / But keep the old / One is silver / The other
gold”—here function as an invitation to and guiding text for action and
object-making. Five cast-plaster versions of the phonographs are leafed in
either silver or gold, depending on which notable person they’re dedicated to:
Such dissimilar yet equally inspirational figures as Gilda Radner and Emma Goldman
are granted the precious metal suggested by their names. The opposite wall
features documentation of a cross-cultural exchange project in which Curreri
offered vibrantly pink MAKE NEW FRIENDS T-shirts to passersby on a street
corner in Seoul. Snapshots show the beaming artist with similarly pleased shirt
recipients. The sincere scout’s-honor invitation to engage is somewhat tempered
by the minimal installation and gallery setting, but Curreri’s attempt at
aligning these divergent elements is an appealingly original—not to mention
ambitious—impulse."
