Casey Kaplan
Goings on About Town
Review: Nathan Carter
With his invention of the Dramastics, a fictional punk band, the Texas-born, Brooklyn-based artist introduces figuration to his abstract lexicon, crossing the biomorphism of Miró and Calder with a confetti-colored cartoon realm. The band stars in Carter’s short film “The Dramastics Are Loud.” But the action, while undeniably charming, pales in comparison with the meticulous detail and handcrafted beauty of the paper-and-wire figures and the dioramalike sets, which were used to create the stop-motion animation. This bright, appealing world, which might have been built by a team of sophisticated bowerbirds, is displayed in the gallery, where we see the young women rehearsing, performing in dives, and touring the world (with a noteworthy stop in Paris). Airy sculptures and colorful drawings—Carter collectively titles these abstractions “The Fascinators”—fill out the installation, but it’s the Dramastics who steal the show.
— The New Yorker