I stopped in to have a second look at Eamon Ore-Giron's solo show at QNA a few hours before the official closing this afternoon. It had been almost a month since I first saw the work at the opening and I wanted to compare my memory with the real thing. I was vaguely underwhelmed during my initial encounter. Not because Ore-Giron had departed from his more conventional paintings, which I saw a year or so ago on a visit to the Headlands, but because he had combined aspects of his past work with what appeared to be formal investigations of only surface-level content.

I'm often reminded that it's difficult to see the art at an opening. The real problem for me, however, is not seeing the art, it's that I can't think with any real depth through the layers of ambient conversation and the distraction of social encounters. After my second visit to Los Creamators earlier today, I internally acknowledged the above realization and made a promise to myself to try to go see shows more than once. My enjoyment rethinking Ore-Giron's work turned out to be well worth the return trip.

The rorschach towers carved out of seam-splayed record-covers are like totems of eerie tribal masks. The 45 rpm record stacks edged with a thin line of color cumulatively form rainbow-roll columns that hover beautifully in the middle of QNA's modest front room. While the use of records and record-covers as sculptural objects has become somewhat overwrought since the advent of the turntable-as-instrument some twenty plus years ago (especially in San Francisco where the aesthetic byproducts of these subcultural pursuits have drifted into the mainstream), these attempts feel fresh. In the larger context of recent art history, however, Los Creamtors only narrowly escapes redundancy. I'm thinking specifically of the work of music-oriented artist Christian Marclay.

The video projection in the back room, which reads like a performance document, shows a utility knife turned record needle. A contact mic has been attached to the blade, picking up sound while it gradually destroys the record (In the second video Ore-Giron applies heat giving the record a lumpy topography). While this gesture reminds me of West-Coast conceptualism's sound experiments from the 70s (like Paul Kos' "The Sound of Ice Melting" from 1970), his clever tinkering extends to low-tech sound device in the form of a circular lapel button printed with a speaker. I asked Bob Linder, one of QNA's directors, about the pile of buttons, and he set the nearby turntable spinning and pressed the needle attached to the button into the grooves of the record. Such a beautifully simple gesture actually produced a miniature sound system. Of course it will eventually destroy the record - making the experience of listening to a recording a small step closer to a live, one-time-only event.

One of the things I love about this show is Ore-Giron's willingness to openly try out various tactics, like a scientist testing an hypothesis. From an experiment involving sandblasting patterns on the surface of records to producing a 2 cd set of music to accompany the exhibition, Ore-Giron's considerable effort is admirable. He is also successful at setting the mood; an overall aura of Pink Floyd tinted mysticism and a tendency toward destruction gives the show a feeling of glossy doom. Maybe he's getting at the worrisome effects of cartesian logic when applied to the more emotional abstractions contained in music. In any case I left the gallery this afternoon feeling excited about his lab-like collection.

Ultimately Los Creamators might be considered a sort of opening act for the more resolved practices of artists like Miguel Calderon and Yoshua Okon, appearing in the "Queremos Rock" group show opening on September 16th, but I look forward to seeing the next group of work from Ore-Giron.

http://queensnailsannex.com/