Nostalgic romanticism and lo-fi aesthetics run rampant in Greetings from Berrydale, Michael Berryhill and Ryan Lauderdale's joint exhibition now open at Okay Mountain. Nostalgia is not a new theme in contemporary art. From the hippie stoner drawings of Neil Farber to the Beckmann-esque canvases of Christoph Ruckhäberle to the feminist intervention video work of Laurel Nakadate, artists today are riffing on a past and casting a romantic glow on a time most of them never directly experienced. Drawing from old master paintings and adolescent church camp pictures, this exhibition is a moderately successful and visually appealing look at Berryhill and Lauderdale’s current work.

Ryan Lauderdale’s drawings and videos cohere around the divergent themes of paganism, the pastoral, youth’s posturing and a 90s raver aesthetic. A series of meticulous drawings graphically recreate church camp group photos using psychedelic design. In zig-zags of rainbow color and black marker line, the kids pose in over-confident stances that reveal a deep insecurity typical of pre-teens at camp. Another work, Pastoral (2007-2008), a low-fi video diptych (on two screens) follows two characters: the first, in white, traverses a meadow while the other, in black, waves a pagan symbol in the barren woods. This video piece, combined with the church images, eerily recalled, for the viewer, a sense of satanic panic found in the 1990s cult documentary Paradise Lost.

Michael Berryhill exhibits nice paintings and drawings that have seemingly little to do with one another. His expertly executed large-scale drawings are less interesting than his messy paintings. With its skewed perspective and roughed up patches and drips, Shui Stack (2008) is a painting reminiscent of Leipzig school interiors. The painting creates the exhilarating feeling of a room falling in on itself.

The most accomplished work in Greetings from Berrydale is a small painting by Berryhill, Cry Master (2008). In this painting, Berryhill renders eyes popping out of a human head only to cross them out with thinly applied brushstrokes. The gestural line and candy-colored tones manage to feel both playful and controlled. I wish this work had been hung next to Lauderdale’s video, A Voice from the Yesterday (2008) so that the popping eyes could gape at this stylized, yet, ambiguous altar. Lauderdale placed a monitor on the floor surrounded by candles and on the wall, an oriental rug is covered in tubes of fluorescent blue lights. In the video, an ominous human head appears bathed in blue and black, intoning a chant. Certainly the disparate objects look neat together, but they also fall prey to the fallacy of style over substance. So, what are these artists nostalgic for? Lauderdale, perhaps speaking for both himself and Berryhill, suggests that we all might be standing at the altar of nostalgia, stealing slick moves and little else.

Katie Geha is pursuing a Ph.D. in art history at the University of Texas at Austin.