What it is: Roses (2011), ink, acrylic, paper, print, 17 by 13 inches

Where it is: SOIL

It’s the underdog show of the month:
Timothy Cross’s small gathering of painted-­on photos and prints in the back area of SOIL called Don’t Blink. Roses is a fresh and poignant painted photograph of red roses. It steals under all your radar. The painted and inked parts are smudgy and washy—pretty, in a messy and decadent way. The total mundaneness of the photograph peeks out from beneath the surface treatments; there’s even the ugly glare of a camera flash on one patch of leaves. The reason this painting is so diabolically good is because red roses are such diabolically bad subjects for art. They mean nothing except how much we want them to mean something. recommended

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...

4 replies on “Blart: Timothy Cross’s <i>Roses</i> at SOIL”

  2. I saw the same show and beg to differ as usual Jen Graves. Sorry but it just seems like your “thing” to champion some random watered down blurb like this that really isn’t “diabolically good”. Your criteria for that assessment is a hackneyed and contrived methodology of catch phrase guidelines that every amateur is now copping, as is this half-baked attempt. Sorry, but it is all just to “disappointing at best”.

  3. “They mean nothing except how much we want them to mean something” What does this mean? Is this some sort of cute, hip, intellectual crap. Since when do we look to objects in a painting in hopes of getting meaning from them. I think you better brush up on your art history Gen Jraves.

  4. “They mean nothing except how much we want them to mean something.”

    “He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.”

Comments are closed.