Bruce High Quality Foundation at the Brooklyn Museum

BHQF, a young group of artists who to this day remain anonymous, emerged in Brooklyn in late 2001. Their retrospective, Ode to Joy 2001-2013, is a sometimes provocative mix of fine art and parody. While they are "dedicated to preserving the legacy" of a fictional character named Bruce, a "social sculptor" who was killed in the September 11th attacks at the World Trade Center, they also tackle the decade of national self-doubt, squandered power, and insecurity that followed the attacks.

This does not resonate immediately as you enter the exhibition. A janitor's mop and bucket filled not with soapy liquid cleaner but a bubbling, red, blood-like substance are placed to the right of the gallery door, and Andrea Bocelli's Con te partirò is playing. The incongruous pairing of the banal cleaning props and Italian operatic classic instantly tells you what the BHQF are about: they are experts at mash-ups. Their works borrow from Warhol and Beuys, as well as masters from the Western tradition like Picasso, Velázquez, and Michelangelo. In one project that's referenced in the exhibition, they restage Géricault's The Raft of Medusa, complete with a makeshift boat (made with a grocery cart, among other things) on the Brooklyn side of the East River. BHQF's sensibility is accessible and democratic, and the retrospective is playful but smart––almost as refreshing as the museum's chilled air.

Through September 22, 2013.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM
200 Eastern Parkway
New York, NY 11238
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