The result has a bit of the hodgepodge quality that beleaguers most juried shows, although one strong theme emerges. What it lacks in elegance and cohesiveness it makes up for in energy.
Most of the artists and curators here are young -- some are just out of school; one hasn't even gotten his bachelor's degree yet. Although "New Art Collective" hops on the emerging-artist bandwagon, Bradbury and assistant curator Shana Dumont set a different parameter than age: Curators and artists had to be on the scene for less than five years.
Independent curator Heidi Marston Aishman (a longtime artist, but only recently a curator) plucked youngster Patrick Short out of the hallways of Boston University, where he was a junior this year. In his frenetic wall drawing " 1/2," Sol LeWitt meets Bart Simpson . Short drew " 1/2" freehand in chalk, using a system of overlapping grids on black. A black gully runs down the center, and the marks get denser as they approach it. The piece prickles and hums, restless yet holding together.
Systems, patterns , and repetition appear in much of the work in "New Art Collective." Axiom Gallery's Phaedra Shanbaum chose digital video artist Shawn Towne , who pairs lulling, patterned visuals with hypnotic music. In his powerful "Carousel," a broad band of vertical black-and-white columns expands, contracts, and changes its stripes. If it ran longer than its 30 seconds, it could trigger a trance state.
Paul Roux , another independent curator, called on his former classmate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts , performance and video artist Katie Osediacz , whose videos here are aggressively monotonous yet sly. "Horses" rushes with rapid-fire edits marked by audio clicks. The shots, taken from several angles, set us eye to eye with a horse. Toward the end the edits stop, and Osediacz goes to slo-mo, letting us gaze into that dark eye as it slowly blinks; all that speed makes this last shot a sweet caress.
