If you ever needed to use puddle drinkers in contemporary linguistic mastery of sorts, it would mean "someone who will stop at nothing for pleasure." So when someone like Clayton Schiff uses it as a show title, I had to think of the irony of it. His characters, whilst participating in some leisurely daily and pastoral meanderings, don't quite look like they are exploring pleasure. They are uneasy. A bit labored. A bit exhausted. But, they are, indeed, trying.
Puddle Drinkers is now on view at 56 Henry in New York, his second show with the gallery, the back of strong showings in Miami and LA recently. The gallery notes of the scenes, "a peaceable kingdom of creatures seem perfectly content living at a low level of existence." There is something about the act of doing, not quite happy, not pleasurable, just living. The use of nudity is both liberating and shaming. The duality is playful, a bit morose, but completely where the world seems to be sitting at. —Evan Pricco
