Ugly Out There

Dismal urban planning in Miami and other "Violent Art"

Comments (0) By Alfredo Triff Thursday, Mar 27 2003

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Robert Preston's oils of city underworlds and freak accidents borrow from black-and-white photos from his father, a Boston newspaper photographer. Preston's images have a Weegee-like hit-or-miss reportorial flavor we don't normally associate with Realist painting. It's somewhat baffling to see these canvases -- with imagined colors and minute details conveying a time somewhere in the past. My favorite Preston is Electra Crash, a gruesome scene of an early 1960s plane crash, at dusk. A two-person seat lies near an algae-covered shore, its occupants still buckled in and wet, dressed in suits with their faces crushed.

Don't miss Charles Krafft's china pistols and assassin kit, as well as his porcelain grenades. My favorite reads Anthrax, which I found to be the most subversive piece in the show. His pistols and grenades are executed in Delft white-and-blue porcelain, typically associated with Dutch windmills and corny pastoral souvenir scenes. At Wild Seduction, a catalogue of Krafft's work entitled "Villa Delirium" and published by Last Gasp shows consistent work by an original and witty artist.

Drive-By Asesino by Adan Hernandez

Details

By Adan Hernandez, Charles Krafft, and Robert Preston through June 14 at Wild Seduction Gallery, 2762 NW 22nd St; 305-633-8951.

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Finally, in a manner emblematic of this gallery, there is Herman Makkink's infamous Rocking Machine, a smooth and glossy white fiberglass sculpture, with a penis rising from a woman's rear -- a prop used by Malcolm McDowell to murder a wealthy woman during a robbery in the aforementioned movie Clockwork Orange.