Jack Greer's 'Shopping for New Furniture'

Jack Greer's first solo show Shopping for New Furniture opened yesterday at the Still House studio space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Jack presented his favorite themes using different media (scans, drawings, paintings, and photographs). One installation, which he likes to call "[his] own East Village," is a giant photo of an angry barking dog, mounted on a wall near another photograph on the floor, depicting a filthy, trash-filled puddle. Other works in the show include his paintings of tiny, colorful worms and some pencil drawings of everyday objects, which are pretty unbelievable.

But what I probably liked the most was Jack's mugshot series of prisoners with face tattoos, which he found on the Internet and then scanned. "All of them have been in jail for a very long time. They may even be there for the rest of their lives," says Jack. "And they have these tattoos of superheroes like Batman and Superman, or deities like God or Satan. They probably think they've become these surreal creatures via their transformation and have acquired superpowers. They are my Incredibles."

I liked the idea that a face can be part of a social contract––if you decide to change it, you implicitely change your relationship with society. I guess I'm really feeling the prison imagery these days (see Julia Ziegler-Haynes' show). Later that evening, Spank Rock played a brief set that electrified us all. Check out the pictures below.