Richard Goulis’ works ‘are landscapes steeped in the rich fluid of my creative processes,’ as he shows in the abstract plaque called Super Nova.

It’s no secret that the art world can seem a little zany at times. Yet, it actually has its own internal order, an aesthetic system of traditions that are always being modified and tweaked by legions of artists out to create the next New Thing. A big New Thing so cool that it’s hot, something that clicks, ignites sparks and makes the covers of magazines, not to mention tons of money. But that’s a tall order since New Things don’t just happen, they result from endlessly tinkering around with Old Things, the trends, movements and art fashions of the past.

  So if the work in Chelsea Rising, the CAC’s show of the newest New York art, sometimes seems nihilistic, that is mere illusion. It is really the latest ripple in the long reign of postmodernism, a movement that is by now decades old. While breezy in tone, the art in Chelsea Rising can seem self-conscious and calculated compared to the work of a more truly anarchistic artist like Richard Goulis, whose aesthetic is so off the wall it might as well be from Mars.

  In fact, he’s from Providence, a graduate of the erstwhile Rhode Island School of Design. Rather than taking its cues from recent art history, his work is striking for its parallels with lava lamps and other examples of wavy-gravy, hippie-era coffee table decor. Occasionally pretty but often just plain weird, it is comprised of all sorts of stuff that is dripped, daubed and smeared onto smallish tiles. Goulis says, "My work comes from the same place as rivers, trees, mountains and greasy scum puddles. There is a lot of discovering, disappointment, experimentation, confusion and ecstasy in these works. They are landscapes steeped in the rich fluid of my creative processes."

  Actually, many of them are steeped in Envirotech, a kind of clear plastic resin that dries to a glassy finish. The greasy scum is underneath, along with ball bearings, gobs of paint or whatever. Super Nova, an abstract plaque made of lacquer, plastic, India ink and acrylic pigment on ceramic tile, suggests a collision of volcanic lava and radioactive pizza sauce, with glassy baubles evoking infernal gases bubbling up from Hades. Village, a gray-green miasma of acrylic, plastic, graphite, glass and lacquer, is no less appalling, if almost admirably so.

  Yet, as soon as we start to exult in the sheer anarchy of it all, art history seems to rear its head again. Paths is a pretty composition of tiny ball bearings and traceries of pigment like something Miro might have attempted after a hard night. Other works sport drips and splashes reminiscent of Jackson Pollock, yet Goulis is never in any danger of respectability; his work remains stubbornly more in tune with lava lamps and pizzas from hell than with anything truly art historical. How did this happen?

  Perhaps his performance art had something to do with it. In the 1980s, Goulis gained notoriety in Providence by having himself shut up in a 7-foot square wooden box for seven days on a busy downtown plaza. It was wired, so he could hear the conversations outside, but nobody could see him. The sensory deprivation later escalated when he was buried alive under several feet of rubble, breathing through a hose, but the worst came when he had his head and hands encased in plaster, which shrinks as it dries, putting pressure on whatever is inside – in this case Goulis.

  Luckily, someone finally noticed that he was in distress and broke open the plaster casings. It seems that some of the objects in this show are the result of the visions he saw while he was, well, plastered, so to speak. Not everyone will find all this to their liking (it wasn’t especially to mine), but there is something to be said for someone who can be so, um, out of the box, as it were. It was just another facet of a remarkably rich and diverse month in the local art world.

  Of late, many readers of this column have asked why "Inside Art" has appeared on a seemingly more-random and less-frequent basis than before. Some have even asked how I could have missed so many recent deadlines. In fact, as of last month, Gambit Weekly’s new format called for "Inside Art" to be renamed "Art Review" and to appear twice monthly, so it now alternates with Dalt Wonk’s theater column, instead of both columns appearing weekly, as before. So be not confounded, dear reader, there really is an underlying method to this, after all.