The title of the show, which rhymes with the artist’s last name, is a good indicator of the feel of this piece which, refreshingly, does not take itself very seriously. I visited this show in the late afternoon on a weekday and besides my friend who joined me, we were the only ones in the gallery. Lining the walls were fuzzy black and white moving images of composition notebooks, on the floor a video of a cat playing with a camera “Touching (Otto)” is being projected onto a litter box, and coming from the back, the main attraction, the 3-D video inside a cardboard dome with a soundtrack filling the space. Upon walking in, we were greeted by a gallery employee who taught us the ropes to this show: there are two sets of 3-D glasses, and one of them has an “on” button that is a little tricky.

At the back of this show was the little dome containing an 11 minute 3-D video “Trading Futures” playing continually as a loop, which is where we started. It is a cozy little spot, fixed up with cushions so you can lay down and get comfortable. I had no idea what was going on the first time around watching “Trading Futures”, it took about 5 minutes to get comfortable with the 3-D image and figure out the “on” button of my glasses. We then proceeded to watch this video 2 and a half times. This video features a dancing animated diaper-wearing person, a little girl (his daughter?), a cat, and a white-spandex suited man. The audio is non-sensical philosophical instruction with a comforting generic beat in the background. At times we see industrial landscapes, inside the girl’s bedroom filled with toys, and outdoors. Somehow it felt to me that part of this video was about entertaining the little girl (who I assume was his daughter), though it also entertained me. The music is calming, and the voice (perhaps Coonleys?) is calming as well even as it prompts us to think and answer questions while we watch, which feels like we are taking a non-consequential quiz. There is one point in the video where we hear a whispering voice saying “I don’t think it’s working. I don’t think my glasses are on” which I found very funny, because I really did have those thoughts and my glasses were in fact, not “on” at one point.

I found his “Rotating Composition” series of slow, pixelated composition notebooks to be funny and somewhat sentimental, as I have used many composition notebooks in my life, but they did not hold my attention for very long. I liked his piece “Touching Otto”; we got an up close image of his cat (same cat as in the longer dome piece), playing with this camera, which was entertaining to watch and cute. There was another piece in the corner “Touching (Lumpy Ghost)” which I did not connect with much, it was a video projected on a rotating spherical mirror. All in all, it seems to  me that Coonley wanted to create a playful and light piece, starting with the title that rhymes with his last name; to poke fun and entertain himself, his daughter, and us, and in that, he succeeded.

 

-Jamie Matson