All Over Albany

Common Side Effects

"Coming Attractions" by Lisa Hoke

We got a chance to stop in at the Esther Massry Gallery at Saint Rose to catch a look at Common Side Effects, the exhibition by Lisa Hoke that's there right now. It's a series of sculptures, murals, and collages made up of product packaging.

Exhibition blurbage:

Quirky, intensely colored sculptures, giant wall murals and small collages are made from cast-off, familiar packaging reclaimed from our mass-produced, consumerist culture. Formerly trash bin detritus, these intricate and labor-intensive creations add gravitas to an ethos of excess and waste. The exhibition features a large-scale, suspended sculpture constructed in the vertical gallery.

Nancy Princenthal, writer, critic and contributing editor of Art in America, states "The ready-made graphics of her materials are meant by their commercial producers to be seductive, and Hoke only bumps up their appeal, organizing them into tapering cones, telescoping cups, fanned plates and pinwheeling spirals of the most dizzying allure." (Excerpted from 2015 essay on Lisa Hoke's exhibition "Attention Shoppers," published by Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York.)

The pieces are vibrantly colorful, and they draw you in as your eye picks out all the various types of packaging involved.

Common Side Effects is on display through December 4 in the Esther Massry Gallery, which is in the Massry Center building (1002 Madison Ave). The small exhibit's worth a stop if you're in the neighborhood.

Saint Rose advertises on AOA.