CamLab.

40000, Chicago IL January 12--February 10, 2007

"Too Check Effect" gives one the impression that L.A.-based duo Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman (CamLab) have been studying human cognitive and social development. Decking out 40000 with wallpaper, vinyl, paintings, mobiles, paper fringe and video work, all covered in distorted black-and-white fashion patterning--houndstooth, checkerboard, polka dots, cowhide--CamLab creates an (obviously ineffectual) camouflage of psychedelic decoration for their investigation of decorative display, subjectivity, and scopophilia.

CamLab's video installation, Critical Field Craft: Apex Cryptophores (all work 2006) was the tightest piece in the show, suggesting that their combined strengths yield the most satisfying results. In this short loop, the artists are seen dressed in a black-and-white striped affair that is part rag rug, part Bog Man disguise (part of which seems in use as a rug on the video lounge floor). So adorned, the duo begin running hand in hand through a dried-out field, lodging themselves in trees like a nest, delivering lines about hide-and-seek (lifted from, or so scripted as to resemble, military-speak) or hog calling to each other as they creep along. "Potential targets engaged in a hostile act or show clear hostile intent," says one CamLab-er in monotone, followed by the other saying, "They live here, they know all the best places that have been used, before we even get here, they know where we're going to go."

The video is funny, since nothing could be less camouflaging than black-and-white stripes set amidst a field of fall browns, but it also strikes the particular tone of cultural ambivalence that CamLab seeks to articulate. The high-contrast "camo" look throws the bodies into anxious relief, disguising them while also making them manifest, just as in popular fashion, particularly of the "tribal" sort. Combined with the serious overtones of the script, the line between fashion, marketing, and consumerism here becomes as blurred and indecisive as on any battlefield.

Of the many objects on display, Wyman's digital wallpaper Sighting Skins with an Anarchic Eye should have commanded a larger wall. A repeat print of tumbling bodies, the paper consists of patterned figures dressed in Wyman's black-and-white costumes and sack-like masks with cut-out photographic mouths and eyes (turned 90 degrees to each other), all affecting a kind of petrified snowball of pleading, screaming faces. The masks, which are more easily seen in CamLab's poster prints, are (perhaps unintentionally yet uncannily) similar to the bags placed on condemned prisoners' heads. Amidst this ragbag of conflicting patterns and purposes, twitching mouths and eyes turn the whole pop mess into a single terrifying costume which, while still managing to conceal itself, actively reverberates with the intense presence of all its obliterated traces.

With such a broad selection of solo works alongside a collaborative video and set of prints, "Too Check Effect" demands to tip it either way: pare it down or lay on even more layers of prints and patterns. Steering a middle course comes across as indecision. In fact, as an attempt to exploit the slippage between decoration and camouflage, CamLab should have averted the ambient conceits of installation, and acted to obliterate their locality completely. Even so, in the more performative (and collaborative) Critical Field Craft, CamLab do manage to expose a piece of the puzzle they can only otherwise hint at.