Michael Scoggins

It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable. — John Stuart Mill   

José Carlos Díaz, one of our best independent curators, is presenting Die Young Stay Pretty, an event with mixed media at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts that he characterizes as a “carefree summer show.” If so, the exhibition has the right flavor with associations of zine, punk rock and 1970s movies. Carlos Díaz borrows his title from the Blondie song and from Michael Anderson’s 1976 film Logan’s Run. Think an understated parody of late capitalist oh-so attitude of indulgence, with a touch of Malthusian will-to-youth snob.

It almost works. An artwork may convey a message that’s evident and still unsuccessful because of how it is delivered. In this case, I have a problem with the angsty exhibitionism and blasé affectation of some of the works.

Take for instance, “Plymouth,” a faux wall section (made with Styrofoam and filled with graffiti and mixed media) by Luis Alonzo-Berkigia. Even if graffiti is naturally busy, this piece has too much going on. Surely, the wall fragment looks veridical in that one can find it in any urban metropolis, but I would vacillate before cutting a fragment that plays so self-consciously at “being a graffitied wall.” Berkigia needs to let go of his horror vacui.

I don’t think Erika Magrey’s video, Favorite Song: Sam, even as charming as it is because of what it represents (a one-take of a pretty girl posing as she sings for the camera inside her room), really achieves something beyond the brief stop at a cute moving image without much to chew on — or remember.

But nothing in the show is as obvious in its imagery as the drawings of Michael Scoggins, whose art is based on his own childhood’s doodling (which Scoggins admittedly reproduces and recontextualizes to a much bigger size). And though I like how he implodes self-deprecation, political satire and humor (“Wolverine” and “Deathbot” are much better pieces than the other two being shown), I wonder if the very premise behind Scoggins’ work is just too much of a clever gimmick (“How much more can one keep borrowing from one’s childhood doodling?”).

Even Vicenta Casañ’s two photos (as charming as they are because of the blurry image of her son in her arms) look a bit abrupt and chancy.

In a more poetic vein, Felice Grodin’s Art Nouveauish white-and-red structure, titled “Blood Meridian,” has the shape of a fragile organ (or a fine wall trimming). As Grodin’s piece crumbles under the weight of time and gravity, its form exudes an aloof, silent morbidity.

I like how Manny Prieres’ work keeps evolving. He’s getting deeper at it and has developed a louder vibe — seemingly bombastic — but there’s also a quiet brewing in it, like a stifled scream. His “Left Behind” is a gigantic skull, a movie poster-like carefully drawn, pencil-colored, with smooth fills of watercolor. The piece takes the whole back wall of the rectangular project room and does a nice job as ice-cake, drawing the darker, Hölderlin-like spirits of Miami close to it.

Besides the lows in the show, Carlos Díaz is definitely on to something. Like in Logan’s Run, we live a post-postmodern predicament of hedonism mixed with overpopulation and environmental pollution. Our needs are supplied by a self-programmed larger-than-life banality (our own utopia becoming a self-induced dystopia).

To escape our contemporary malaise, Carlos Díaz has concocted a die-young-stay-pretty aesthetic, which exaggerates banality to — simultaneously — mock it and escape it. The only problem (and not a minor one) is that Carlos Díaz risks falling for the very thing he tries to escape all over again.

A final note: When Debbie Harry sang “Die Young, Stay Pretty” back in the late ’70s, she was already in her early 30s. Now close to 60, Harry no longer qualifies as a pin-up in Carlos Díaz’s conceptual scheme. Sorry to spoil the party, but everything follows the universal law of matter: Everything grows up and decays — that is, except pop.

Die Young Stay Pretty is on view through Saturday, July 21 at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, 2043 N. Miami Ave., Miami. Call 305-576-1804 or visit www.dlfinearts.com. View images from the show here.