Nisian Hughes’ show, Naked, that opened September 10th 2009 at the Witzenhausen Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, New York City clothes an imparted gratuitousness in a repetitive veiled finery of what is not rendered. Allusiveness is an epistemological creed in Hughes’ videos, housed in varied sized stainless steel frames.

Naked women, some in groups, some solo, all perfectly proportioned, pose in incongruous surroundings, a designed affectation: a wooded clearing, two naked women, both ostensibly at ease, one with her back directly on the ground, head resting on right arm, right leg bent at knee, crossing left leg while the other figure sits, back straight, holding an ax. The sprawled out woman pays her no heed, but the image disallows the viewer to conclude anything. The ax, menacing in that it looks like it can chop that resting head, seems totally unaffiliated with any reference, even the pile of chopped wood, facilitated by the nearby barbell to provide muscle development. We are set up, given determinants, pseudo-cohesion, led to back off.

Hughes presents women who are attractive, sexy, but expected titillations do not emanate from them. In fact, nothing springs from anything in these videos, not even being able to title them videos, for they are what Hughes calls “moving images which appear at first glance to be stills,” an unexpected shift within the “still” image. Our sense of knowing is abased. Hughes has created a new genre, “fake-out art.”

He configured the protective walls to any criticism of his art: banal, gratuitous juxtapositions, historical compositions referenced with a wink. He has cut cause and effect to lay out a controlled continuity. His videos are a landscape of “why,” and he exits with “blank” canvas variants sustained in a complimentary, inexplicably framed miniaturization. This is the art of intent that shakes substantiation.

~Alan Nadler