Review

Installation view of "Space Rock Spasm," showing "Totem (1)," 3-Channel HD Video Animation. Photo by Elijah Gowin.

Barry Anderson
Space Rock Spasm

10 a.m.-4 p.m. (appointment recommended)

Review Studios Exhibition Space
1708 Campbell Street
Kansas City, MO
816.471.2343

Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, appointments recommended. Open First Friday, April 2, 6-9 p.m.
Runs through: April 10.

Artist's site: http://www.barryanderson.com
Gallery site: http://reviewstudios.org

Bad news first: You're not going to have all the time you need to take in Barry Anderson's Space Rock Spasm.

Next, the good news: The above statement will be true, no matter how much time you spend in the Review Studios Exhibition Space between now and the closing of Anderson's multimedia show on April 10.

Yeah ... it's that engrossing, and that deserving of repeated visits.

The show's eight works, three of them using sound as a major component, are full of accessible — but not overly obvious  — imagery. (As a hint, Anderson calls Space Rock Spasm a selection of works, fragments, and experiments highlighting influences ranging from underground cinema to comic books, Kraut rock to geo-politics, Gothic monsters to theoretical physics.)

Those works, fragments and experiments are also loaded with visual, perceptional and emotional hooks.

Need some calming and centering? Anderson delivers. His work is almost hypnotic in effect, with repeated, rhythmic motion in endless loops.

(The exception is the 5-channel New Years Dilemma, which incorporates one channel of quick-cut blurriness and audio from New Years by Kansas City composer Christopher Biggs. At Friday night's opening reception, it seemed to be a favorite of the kids in attendance.)

Space Rock Spasm offers a dose of fun for big kids, too, especially those with a jones for superhero comics and classic low-budget horror.

Totem (1), the piece shown in the installation view above (as photographed by Elijah Gowin), appears at first glance to be a column of either oil or smoke gushing up from the desert floor. A second look reveals spinning faces in the column ... and then it becomes a game of Can You Spot the ...?

Which face resolves first? That depends on the viewer's experiences and predilections. For me, it was the face of the first zombie to make an appearance in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

"I was going for the totemic images from pop culture," Anderson said at the opening reception. "I'm still obsessed with comic books."

It shows. A partial list of characters in Totem (1) includes Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer and at least half the Fantastic Four.

The others are probably in there, too. There just wasn't enough time to pick them out, before the opening reception closed down.

Don't blame Anderson if you find yourself in a similar situation at closing time. Just make another appointment ... and prepare to find yourself engrossed all over again.

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