Larry Krone at the Contemporary Art Museum

St. Louis-born, New York-based artist Larry Krone is known for the humorous country-and-western-themed objects and performances in his recent midcareer survey. The exhibition looked like a celebrity auction preview consisting of stage props, costumes, backdrops and numerous related objects, totaling 119 handmade works (1990 to 2006). Mounted on the walls, displayed in vitrines or hung on monofilament, the assorted objects illuminated Krone's multifaceted personality and his admiration of the big-hair era for country-and-western music (think Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton). In videos and self-portraits throughout the show, he sports the male version of big hair--cowboy hat, mutton chops and handlebar mustache.

But Krone's rugged Nashville look belies his methods; most works in the exhibition were sewn, embroidered or crocheted, using skills he learned in high school. A chenille tree stump, an oversize crazy-quilted hobbyhorse and a crocheted scarf bearing the lyrics "It's All Wrong" were among the inelegant yet meticulously crafted objects on view. Unrepentantly obsessive, Krone also showed works like Margaritaville in which single strands of hair sealed between waxed paper form all 207 words of Jimmy Buffet's tune.

Krone's performances (often in collaboration with family members) exude a kind of Judy Garland/ Mickey Rooney energy. The exhibition catalogue describes how he taught himself to play ukulele, make Mylar backdrops, sew costumes (some of which appear in the show) and draw performance playbills freehand. On a single video monitor on one side of the gallery, Krone and family belt out country-and-western standards like King and Stewart's Tennessee Waltz, Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors (in which Krone does a striptease down to patchworked Underpants of Many Colors, 2003), and the Judy Garland staple Somewhere Over the Rainbow, in which he pulls his oversize Dorothy Dress (2002) over his 6-foot-2-inch frame. The songs could be heard throughout the galleries, adding to the ambience.

The exhibition centered around hand-stitched costumes--like those worn in the videos--hung as if performing on stage. One set of denim costumes included blue lame-accented chaps and a petticoat-stuffed square-dance skirt embroidered with names such as Sissy and Buck in gold piping. While rainbow and four-leaf-clover wall pieces abounded in the exhibition, the mood was more dark than perky. Many of Krone's objects would fit right in at desolate truck stops, cheap hotels and grungy bars, among them his It's Too Late and That's Too Bad, which consists of Old West-style barroom signage, and his beer-bottle collection with the lyrics to Someday I'll Get My Life Straight etched inside.

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