New Yorker:
May 13, 2002
Goings on About Town
LISA KERESZI
Although Kereszi photographs the banal-a few pieces of popcorn on a blue theatre floor, a cotton-candy-pink curtain next to an equally tacky painting – she avoids ironic angles and reveals a romantic sensitivity for the everyday. One image offers a deadpan look at the spot where two single mattresses meet to form a fake-out double bed; another shows a vacant rooftop parking lot. At first, it looks like another detached urban landscape. Then you notice a distant fireworks display bursting into the picture like Tinkerbell. Through May 27. (Pierogi, 177 N. 9th St., Williamsburg. 718-599-2144.)
"INSIDE OUT":
Interior photography often veers toward a dry-as-dust celebration of the banal, but this small group show breaks with tradition and presents uninhabited public places-waiting rooms, hotels, cafés-in rich color and with a looming sense of drama. Speaking of drama, wasn't Sara Gilbert, who has two pieces in the show, Roseanne Barr's daughter in an earlier life? Her pictures of movie and TV sets tweak the interior shot: "Studio City, Work #3" seems to be a house seen from the outside, but it's an electrical-taped fake on a back lot. Jake Chessum's spooky waiting room, with perfectly spaced ashtrays and blood-red carpeting, and Lisa Kereszi's hotel-room bathroom, two lonely washcloths over a robin's-egg-blue sink, owe a debt to Alfred Hitchcock. Through July 25. (Morris, 465 W. 23rd St. 212-727-2752.)
Online review:
At Pierogi, Lisa Kereszi's sumptuous photographs of desolate Vegas locations, and vulnerable Burlesque dancers tempted the nasty little voyeur in me and I got my scopophilia on without regret. Gallery I is full of lonely images that imply the aftermath of some other event, possibly morally reprehensible things that would make a conservative pee in their pants. I mean, the powers that be can't stomach the thought of a woman aborting an unwanted child, but they were eager to get this war on. The hawks presented Bush with ground invasion plans for Iraq prior to September 11th. The same plan they tried to sell Clinton for eight years. The hypocrisy of the right makes it imperative that anyone who dislikes fascism speak up now.
Gallery II is full of lonely girls getting ready to shake their asses for dirty old men but Kereszi doesn't judge with her camera. She records the humanity behind the spectacle aimed at suckers like me. Her photographs ultimately aren't quite as inspiring as her project but she finds good art in those sinful Vegas show rooms that no self-respecting Christian Republican would be caught dead in by creating a point-of-view that isn't busy objectifying its subject. Landscapes and Interiors/New Burlesque is on display through April 14th.
http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/april_2003/artcrawl.html