For anyone unfamiliar with Forcefield, the Providence-based art and music collective in which Jim Drain participated, a brief synopsis might be in order: Forcefield surged to popularity when, as the cliché goes, they were “plucked from obscurity” for the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Their contribution to that show was a pandemonium of ear-cracking sound, seizure-inducing films, and bewigged mannequins sheathed in the collective’s trademark knit Afghans, which look like they were produced by a team of Taylorist acidheads with industrial looms. With an engagé ethos involving anticommercial, trash-assimilating, egoless creativity binges, Forcefield answered the hungry call for a new radicalism in the art world. But it’s difficult to remain radical and comply with the requisites of professional success: Faced with a host of pressures and expectations, Forcefield disbanded.
Jim Drain’s first solo show suggested that Forcefield’s aesthetic—psychedelic, primitive-futuristic, and vividly colored—was largely the result of his ingenuity. The walls were painted in hues of violet, yellow, gray, and pale green and decorated with Op art—style silk-screened diamonds and discs. The diamonds formed a god’seye pattern in hot pink while the discs suggested LPs, Duchamp’s “Rotoreliefs,” lollipops, and hypnotists’ spirals. Against this funhouse backdrop Drain populated the room with sculptures cultivated from an arsenal of trimmings and notions: fabric- covered spools, tassels, fake gems, fun fur, and pompom trim. These carnivalesque objects conjure medieval court jesters, harlequinade, the ’70s kids’ TV show HR Pufnstuf, and the Yoruba.
Read the full article here
