Here’s what the curator, Juliet Helmke, had to say about the four artists she selected to be highlighted on BRIC’s home page:
This month’s shortlist comprises a group of artists working with sculpture, new media or performance, whose aesthetic is characterized by an element of play. Joan Grubin’s paper strips painted bright, fluorescent colors rising out of the wall surprise by their simplicity and optical trickery. Cat Del Buono takes on the societal propensity for stereotyping in a video installation that acts out some gross generalizations and asks the question: Do I look Italian Now? Dave Rittinger literally puts a kink in the system with Pole Dance, a subway-car intervention where the pole for travelers to hang on to is knotted in the middle. And his Love Connections—four double ended power cords yearning their perfect fit—is reminiscent of Rachel Selekman’s abnormal watering-cans. There is a lovely humor in both distortions of these ordinary objects. The amorphous suits worn by Lizzie Scott’s performers in Styrene Fantastic allow for a similar bizarre banality, when the wearers repeatedly rise from the ground then flop back down wearing expressions of utter nonchalance. Though a list of works with disparate mediums and aesthetics, all are characterized by a strange and often-surprising element of whimsy.