“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!” Long before the character Jack Torrance in the Shining typed this sentence (and typed this sentence) into pop culture infamy, it has been a recurring idea in western literature for centuries. This theme crossed my mind after visiting the opening of Products of the Playful, a tightly organized show by Art + Method, a new gallery in Bushwick, smartly converted from lofty apartment to art/event space.
There is a focused intensity to this group selection, but the variety of processes and spirited experimentation are the overriding characteristics for the work by artists, Kirkland Bray, Adam Frezza & Terri Chiao, Kate Nielsen and Adams Puryear. The show’s title leads with the word “Products”, alluding to the artists’ connection to design and the applied arts. But this term, as used in mathematics, can also express a greater result achieved when multiplying quantities. Fittingly, each artist shows tandem bodies of work, where the interplay of drawing, collage, painting, environmental sculpture and ceramics heighten the senses, both the tactile and visual.