This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 26, 2010 - "In the Manner of Smoke," the exhibition of video and installation work by Pittsburgh-based Jerstin Crosby at Good Citizen Gallery, is precisely that -- work so elusive that it defies attempts to endow it with solid form through description. Suffice it to say that the installation, prints, objects and video -- plus the image on Good Citizen's public billboard (below) -- comprise an oblique, fondly parodical homage to the animal rights movement.
The main installation is a type of secret fort for animal activists, filled with all the literature ("The Monkey Wrench Gang" and "Animal Liberation"), food (trail mix, fashioned in ceramics), entertainment (a yin-yang hacky sack) and fashions (tie-dye bandanas) required to sustain them during a stint off the grid.
A nearby bulletin board titled "Community News and Events #4" indirectly portrays members of the eco-vegetarian crowd with even more withering sarcastic humor. But it's the video, "Little Clouds of Smoke," that seems simultaneously to encapsulate Crosby's message and pitch it just slightly out of reach.
In a dreamlike, Goth version of a Seinfeld episode, Jerry, Elaine and George may or may not be vegetarian activists -- they talk a lot but don't get around to much action other than repairing the crack in the "fourth wall." As I said, it's elusive as smoke, impossible to look away from, sardonic and celebratory at once.
Ivy Cooper, a professor of art at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is the Beacon's art critic.