Sue Williams at David Zwirner

Sue Williams's current exhibition at David Zwirner, called "Project for the New American Century," was one of the most thought provoking shows I've seen in a long time. The show's main content consists of several very large oil and acrylic paintings that, from across the room, look like mundane ab-ex works.. Upon closer examination, the paintings depict a lacy web of guts, gore, and entrails.

Although the imagery depicted is visceral and shocking, the paintings themselves are more fun and playful than they are disgusting. Part of their playfulness comes from the lowbrow-inspired color and linework. The paintings have only a few colors each, and although they were done in oil and acrylic, they look like they were silkscreened or otherwise printed onto the canvases. There aren't any visible brushstrokes or areas of impasto or anything to suggest a connection to "traditional" painting. Although they use the scale of masterpiece paintings, they look like they would be more comfortable in the pages of a Robert Crumb comic or painted on the side of a motorcycle. Comic books, particularly underground comics, are known for their depictions of violence (like Fritz the Cat being murdered with an icepick), and these paintings take that stereotype and blow it up to be wall-sized.

While looking at the paintings, I began to deconstruct their possible meanings. One of my first thoughts involved ancient divination rites in which priests would gut an animal and tell the future from the patterns in the entrails. What if, in the tradition of Francis Bacon, these paintings were a memento mori telling the viewer that he or she is simply made out of meat?

On the way out of the gallery, I took copies of everything on the reception desk and stuffed them in my messenger bag. One of the papers I took was a document explaining, down to the most minute reference, the artist's intended meaning of each piece in the show. Apparently the artist wanted to critique the Bush Administration's foreign policy, but the paintings didn't make that view explicit enough, so the gallery printed up a little cheat sheet.

I liked the paintings before I found out what they were about. The whole idea of printing up a sheet explaining what the paintings are about is awfully patronizing to the gallery-goer. I like looking at art and coming up with my own critical interpretations -- that's why I write these reviews. The revelation of the artist's "intentions" has poisoned my ability to view the work from my own perspective. The paintings were great on their own, but the artist stepped in and ruined everything for me.