For Valentine’s Day we ventured over to the Hole Gallery on Bowery between Houston and Bleeker for the opening of Theo A. Rosenblum & Chelsea Seltzer’s “Two Heads are Better than One” 

Quite appropriate theme for the Day, these two artists have worked in tandem for years creating a world of plastic bizzarness. Their found paintings are repainted and individually framed with hand molded odd plastic frames. A simple painting of a country home becomes an odd party scene with cartoony like figure’s passed out on the porch and crazy images all around. An assortment of fast food surrounds a romantic painting of wild horses charging across a rainbow, and a simple painting of a nude becomes a scene of a cartoon bug eyed man groping her.

Our favorite was the “Snow Manimal” however. Somehow the Horse torso and the plastic snowman fit together so well, it is so bad it rounds back to good.

This is mentioned to be the curatorial premiss as a matter of fact. These artists vibe are similar to the Japanese Heta-Uma (literally good-bad) movement of Japanese punk artist King Terry articulated. As they explained in the write up for the show,

“ Something “technically” bad that challenges the notion of “bad” by being sensually and conceptually amazing: a wonky line often describes a face much more evocatively than a perfectly rendered photo-realist drawing, for example. In Rosenblum and Seltzer’s world, these hand-sculptured and not-quite-right forms—and even the “handmade” and wonky ideas that form them—are much more exciting than a fabricated (or logical) version would be.”

Also at the back of the gallery is a wall of their drawings which became the show. It is always interesting to see how fetal ideas become full blown creations. It gives the show strength.

Great show go check it out and decide for yourself if its “good” or “bad” 

Theo A. Rosenblum and Chelsea Seltzer
Two Heads are Better than One
February 14th – March 17th, 2012