It’s all very dark. Dark and oily slick. The looming dark foreboding, pressing down, pushing in, seeping from underneath to drown everything in shadow. The zeitgeist of cool detachment, of heavy import and of skating just above the void. It could all be a playbook for our collective unconscious. Repelled by the implied violence yet inexplicably drawn towards the edge. Sexy, thick and pounding, projecting a somnambulant emotionless über, this show could have been titled:  NW New Nihilism. 

 Pendelton House starts it off right, crawling in and thrashing about on a projected Zoe Scofield blood red line. As they writhed and grappled with each other and with something always beyond their grasp, driven by some sort of animal lust, I was given a sense of my own emotional body sometimes torn between and frustrated by the vagaries of fragmented thought.  

Kyle Lovin’s Ham Sandwich is a study in paranoia. Locked in solitary with his sandwich(s), Kyle proceeds to build castles and descend further into a dark rabbit hole. 

Zac Pennington evokes the ghost of Klaus Nomi and the New Age Vaudeville of yesteryear. The au savage falsetto, powdered and pinched face, the twitchy emphatic gesture, operatic and grand almost stream of consciousness storytelling; the flirtatious S&M knotting of mic cord, right down to the black pantsuit and giant white wedge collar. It’s like watching the entire NY 1980’s art scene made flesh. I want to hire him for my fantasy punk wedding.

Rainbow Fletcher casts lovers in ski-masks from the slightly surreal, uncomfortable eden in white, into a roiling dark reality of ballet in black leather. The trappings of fetishistic, “hidden” identities in designer bondage gear coupled with delicate embracing and sweeping movement arouse memories of a dark, Venetian masked ball.