The Village Voice, November 19, 1991

IN THE ROSE GARDEN

Ida Applebroog: “Safety zone”

For some reason, there were more dogs at Ida Applebroog’s opening than I have ever seen in a gallery. The twin bassets genuinely have their charms, and I suppose that dogs who frequent galleries are astute enough not to lift their legs. Nevertheless, accidents happen, and Applebroog’s work begs for trouble. She’s taken many of her canvases off the wall and left them standing like props on a stage; one painting lies flat on the floor as if forgotten. The works, spread out all over the gallery, create a kind of maze; we’re the rats.

The subject of elimination has also captivated the artist. A tiny suited gentleman gracefully lifts his leg to relieve himself with aplomb in ooze/whose. No hands! But hovering above him like a bad dream sits an old, pathetic man wearing a large diaper. It looks stitched together, as if the man just got out of surgery. The diaper is worn over his clothes, suggesting a kind of humiliation and helplessness that older, ill people must know. To his right, occupying another frame, two nurses stand together, holding hands; they’re awash in a fleshy pink, posing in front of a rose-covered trellis. They look so sweet, despite the fact that they’ve left the old man to rot in his soggy diaper. Guess they never promised him the rose garden.

Applebroog’s work is sweet and nasty, but the sweet never apologizes for the nasty. Rejecting various media strategies of the ‘80s, the painter uses paint to tell stories from “real” life. The “Safety zone” referred to in the title of this exhibition might be the canvas itself, the place where the artist is most safe. Where else does Applebroog, or any artist, enjoy her freedom? Applebroog fills her work with contradictory information, making sure that nothing is taken at face value. The most mundane event, say a woman rubbing a dog’s belly, becomes charged with sexual anxiety. “Reality” is continually reinterpreted as a place where “normality” equals “madness.” Everything requires quotes in this work, except for the visceral pleasure that Applebroog seems to take in painting her images and the delicate, whimsical balance of her wacky constructions. Initially the little paintings that surround or even sit right on the surface of her larger canvases look interchangeable, but each one is a piece of a narrative, a branch on an expanding family tree. One could prune it, but something would be missing.

-ELIZABETH HESS