The frivolity and dizziness of "Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures" at the Portland Art Museum goes beyond sheer entertainment. It explores (or perhaps exploits?) our subjugation to commercialism and calls into question the passé state of traditional forms of art. "Let's Entertain" does not put forth a resolution, and we should hardly expect it to. Its fast-paced style and slick packaging achieves more than a dazzling effect; it illustrates a lonely and barren landscape that parallels the perpetual evolution of our sensory indulgence.

An assortment of "interactive" pieces gives visitors the opportunity to participate in the exhibition. Darth-Vader-like virtual reality backpacks allow visitors to trade video-cam perspectives of the show with the click of a button. Peter Friedl's self-titled exhibit lets visitors wear any of 13 plush animal costumes while moving through the galleries. The work serves as a masquerade of mutability and melancholy, and encourages its participants to discard the costumes wherever they choose throughout the exhibition. Maurizio Cattelan's Stadio (Stadium) (1991), a 22-player foosball table, embodies futility in a game where no victor can emerge.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series (1977-1980) remains a touchstone for the photographic arts. The 69 photographs portray vampish female characters in archetypal situations of peril. Film stills without the film, we see only the female--never the threat that lurks off camera. They are equally dispersed throughout the exhibition to provide stability in an otherwise chaotic experience.

Mike Kelly, in collaboration with Paul McCarthy, has taken film artist Vito Acconci's renowned videotapes of the early '70s and enlisted various B-movie and soft-core porn stars to re-enact them in Fresh Acconci (1995). The original versions show a haggard, gravel-voiced Acconci performing a plethora of disturbing monologues that rang from paranoid rantings to lurid solicitations. Pieces that represent man overcome with isolation and desire have been turned into an equally disturbing, yet more materialistically debased, depiction of the Self.

Disturbing both the physical and metaphorical symmetry of the architectural area in which it is installed, Douglas Gordon's Above all Else... (1991; reconstructed 2000) lurks eerily above, awaiting discovery. The words that end the piece, "We are evil," were the chant of a local football team Gordon had read about. The message, both figurative and literal, exists as an example of the influences that adhere themselves to our perspective of culture.

The artists' collective Kyupi Kyupi creates videos smothered with pop culture references, extravagant costumes, campy sci-fi settings, and erotically charged plots. In Fishheads (1999-2000) three men adorned with fishhead-shaped helmets connected to full-length vinyl suits chase a voluptuous woman. In Pizza Erect (1999) actors are adorned with colored wigs, excessively high heels, or green tentacles coming forth from their heads. The video comes across as a synergy of Star Trek and soft-core pornography.

Minako Nishiyama has become one of the most recognized members of the Kawaii, an important branch of 1990s Japanese pop art. Her sculptural environment, Nice Little Girl's Wonderful Dressing-Up Room (1992), points to our own fascination with changing identities (or figurative costumes). At the same time, there is no little girl present within the life-size dollhouse lined with uterine pink carpeting, and perhaps there never was.

The blurred line between art and entertainment becomes even more polluted when we see entertainment as commodity. Has the technology- and consumer-driven capital state of postmodernism permanently corrupted civilization's sensibilities toward a true aesthetic? "Let's Entertain" does not give us the answer to that question, but it does enable us to recognize that it needs to be asked.

Read more about "Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures."

By Tommy Wright

Date Published: July 6, 2000

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