Michael Kohn Gallery introduces to us a post-humous opening of Martha Alf’s, titled Opposites and Contradictions. The artistic statement cannot help but be fully realized with the most banal and bare necessities being edified so highly. For sardonicism? Of course not. For levity.

Martha Alf. Costa Brava Green, 1972
Oil on canvas
23 x 36inches. Courtesy of the artist and David Kohn Gallery. Copyright Martha Alfa estate.

And it is in this installation of humor within fine arts which is the most positive extension of the Western Fine Arts history, away from sacred stern and odious veneration, towards the more gleefully bountiful. Is this not what art is aimed at anyways? To celebrate life?

So is it debasing to contemplate toilet paper which is mass manufactured? In what way? To relate our concepts of beauty necessarily toward a region lower than what is transcendental. Yet, if informed with goodwill, are we not motivated to look at our mundane reality brighter? As offering itself constant significance, because of its oftentimes absurdity? To be moving amidst the currents of industrial capitalist production and its vortex which ensnares all, while being able to reflect upon it positively, takes a certain strong spirit, one of good courage, to look past the mania of consumption and instead find a ply in the sublime.

It is a remedy to level with the pretentious. That, amidst the honest seriousness of making an eternal testimony, sh*t happens. But also fruits of one’s toil! The naked modeling of the pear artworks etched brings out a sustained humor at the deathly serious attribution towards eternal works. Towards those which must be endurable for thousands of

Martha Alf
Four Pears, 1989
Verithin colored pencil on paper
22 1/4 x 30inches
Frame:
27 x 34 3/4inches. Courtesy Martha Alf and David Kohn Gallery. Copyright Martha Alf Estate.

years, to be received and therefore resonant with future generations. It is this measure of greatness, of grandeur, which can be positively impacted through such an original, if not clever, perspective of the same world Andy Warhol occupied; one awash in the lavishness of disposable goods.

Martha Alfa. Two Bosque Pears, 1996
Derwent colored pencil on Arches
paper
15 x 20 3/16inches
Frame:
22 x 27 1/4inches. Courtesy of Martha Alfa and David Kohn Gallery.
Copyright Martha Alfa estate.

It is in this contradiction of “disposability” and “eternity” which Western Civilization finds itself conflicted with. There are two roads to go down. Which one is favored kindlier by the human race? Which is more lasting? Love or hate?