Kate's Review #2

Melanie Smith is a multi-media artist whose work addresses, “the urban, cultural, and socio-economic realities of the sprawling megalopolis” of Mexico City. This particular exhibition, entitled Spiral Cty & Other Vicarious Pleasures is separated into two distinct groups: a number of sculptures that compose an installation that comments on the rampant commercialism of Mexico City, and a room of bleak black and white photographs and videos of the streets of the city.
Jam Side Up, Jam Side Down, a 1992 collaboration between Melanie Smith and Francis Alys, occupies the center of the MIT gallery. A plywood alley, filled with all manner of bright, bulbous vinyl objects hanging like clothing, supplies just enough room for a person to pass through, though she might still brush elbows with the objects. Latex gloves had been knotted together and clustered into giant spheres. White Styrofoam bananas hung in bunches. Inflatable rings were strung along the metal bar that so recalled a closet’s bar. This aisle, a direct critique of consumerism, is constructed to call attention to the unexamined ritual of shopping.
Smith’s piece, Orange Lush (1995), a collage of orange plastic objects on wood, echoes that critique. She adhered a garish orange wig beside floaties, a gaggle of deflating balloons, hula hoops, vinyl, bright cording coiled into a hank, and synthetic toys. Smith’s words hung beside the piece on a little plaque. It read, “Orange seemed to indicate a certain attitude I had about Mexico City at that specific time; orange was always in your face…Wherever something wanted to catch your attention it was orange—I could never separate the color from the object, and all these orange objects seemed to homogenize everything.” By using found objects to convey the feeling a color conjures up instead of, say, paint, Smith calls attention to the obsessive consumption and collection of bright and worthless objects.
Melanie Smith and Rafael Ortega’s 2002 piece, Spiral City, filled the next room with the grey network of Mexico City’s streets, viewed from a helicopter and shot in grainy black and white in a single take. This piece is a stark contrast to the popping color of the other room. Here, the viewer is sucked into an “energy drain” after being overwhelmed, and leaves the gallery as deflated as one of the balloons affixed to Orange Lush.