"'Reality' Show" Show

with work by Anna Krachey, Jill Pangallo (on that AVB page, click on her name in the column at left), Cecelia Phillips, Laura Turner, and Jamie Wentz; well worth the drive to Denton (TX).

Sharing a[n] . . . obsession for 'reality' TV, five artists come together for weekly watching parties and ultimately become their own . . . "Reality Show." . . . [T]he [artists] have [shared] tears and angst-ridden moments watching innumerable hours of television to bring you this multimedia exhibition. Their compulsion to not miss shows – with the athleticism and action on "So You Think You Can Dance," the drama and heartbreak of "The Bachelor," and jealousy-inspired backbiting of "The Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search" – has led to this collection of 'reality' inspired artworks.

[Editing supplied.] Perhaps most interesting to me was Pangallo's Group Crit: The Pilot (2008), single-channel video, 30:14 min., in which the "reality"-show-watching artists play themselves giving themselves crits on works that are of course themselves virtualities. The "pilot" deploys cinematographic clichés typical of the reality genre and is sprinkled with such surreal remarks as one approving the "hand-made" quality of Krachey's Photoshop-collaged Bachelor Babies (2008). The video's a virtual (so to speak) hall of mirrors.

Through Oct. 14 in the galleries in TWU's Fine Arts Building (Denton, TX), thanks to Vance Wingate.

P.S.: If you'll be in Marfa, TX, Oct. 9-10, Pangallo's organizing a video show for Monofonus Press, to be shown at El Cosmico; check it out.