‘Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing’ at FLAG Art Foundation opens with artworks that avoid actual engagement in the sport – ‘I told you nobody ought never to fight him,’ reads a text painting by Ed Ruscha while Paul Pfeiffer’s video ‘Caryatid (Pacquiao)’ digitally removes one of the fighters in a bout. Soon enough though, the match is on in a blaze of color in Rosalyn Drexler’s pastel of a lime-green colored athlete against a pink background, Katherine Bradford’s fighters locked in an exhausted or amorous embrace, and Angela Dufresne’s small expressionist oil painting of two circling fighters surrounded by a spray of blue and red paint that conveys the violence and energy of the match. Engaging with the sport on many levels, FLAG’s show requires no specialty knowledge to appreciate the enjoyably eclectic inclusions, from an ancient Roman oil lamp featuring a boxer to Eadweard Muybridge’s late 19th century photographic studies and much more. (On view through August 11th).
