“Contemporary art is a discourse always explained but never understood.”- Patrick Mimvan. This quote was surreptitiously placed on a huge billboard outside the Nicole Klagsbrun gallery on 26th st and 10th avenue. Keep that quote in mind as I try my best to illustrate the punk rock ass kickery that is Ted Riederer’s, “The Resurrectionists.”

The concept behind the exhibit is that Ted and his friends beat the holy hell out of a drum set, two guitars and a shiny red bass. Then in the grand tradition of Humpty Dumpty he methodically puts all the pieces back together again. Then this poet/ warrior composes a piece of music and records it using the reconstructed pieces!

“But why? Dear God Why?”’ you may ask.

He does this to illustrate his love of one word: NOTHING! He believes the word nothing, “…does not point to our insignificance or our unhappiness, but on the contrary to our fulfillment and our divinity, since everything is in ourselves.” Pretty kooky, huh?

The whole instillation is set up on three walls in a sparse all white room that’s maybe 12 x 12 feet. The left hand wall is a painting of the destroyed instruments in a jumbled scrambled egg pile.

The right hand wall has a series of printed individual brown and black .45 records pinned to it. One says: “Q- the use of the living for the dead.” Another one states: “A- the use of the dead for the living.” Smack in the middle of the wall is a large print of a funeral wreath composed of dried sticks bound with barbed wire.

The center of the room is flanked by two real life funeral wreaths, both of which were bare sticks wound with barbed wire. The one on the left read: “Immaterial Substance” The one on the right had lilies pinned to it and sent the message,”Insoluble Bliss”.(Admittedly, this would all seem really creepy and morbid, but the underlying message here is personal fufillment.)

Between them were the instruments, all put back together and displayed in their resurrected glory. The back wall had a big screen flat panel television. On it was a room in a warehouse.

We get to watch as in alternating slow and fast motion Ted and three of his buddies thrash and pummel the instruments into splinters. The whole time we are treated to a spacey orchestration that Ted wrote and recorded using the instruments in front of us.

The duality of something so simple yet intricate all at the same time made me an instant fan of this dude I never heard of before. It also blew my fuckin’ mind!

Bad News:
• The exhibit ends on Saturday night
• It will subconsciously make you want to destroy things in a Hulk- like fashion

Good News:
• His work can be seen in Altered, Stitched and Gathered at p.s.I/ MoMA.

*BE THE COOLEST KID ON YOUR BLOCK*

• 26th St. between 10th and 11th is a cornucopia filled with a bunch of warehouses each with a gaggle of different galleries in them. This block has art for everyone from post modernists to hard core porno coinsurers. Definitely worth checking out!
AND IT’S ALL FREE!