This Weird Place between Pixels

by Dean Liscum

Two realities that inform This Weird Place, which was curated by Sebastian Forray, are the tension between abstraction and figuration and the digital marketplace of images that is Flickr.

In his gallery talk at the Cecil Horton Gallery at Lawndale, Forray chose not to discuss the theme that unites the artists and their works, but the virtual space in which they can be found, Flickr. This virtual meeting space allows artists to mix and mingle ideas without sharing a physical space. This new reality (new in the history of art making) is integral to the show because three of them: Lane Hagood, Alika Herreshoff, and Cody Ledvina are from Houston and three of them: Lee Piechocki, Anthony Record, and Eric Shaw, are not.

Sebastian Forray and Cody Ledvina discuss This Weird Place at Lawndale

The blurb on the exhibition website provides more insight into each of the six artists works.

Anthony Record’s images are wrung from the awkward pixels of primitive computer drawing programs, and re-rendered with fastidious care into paintings and needlepoint rugs, which both counter and exalt their origins. Both Eric Shaw and Cody Ledvina work impulsively, in an elemental and pseudo-psychedelic re-examining of the familiar figure through rhythmic amalgamation and deconstruction. Lee Piechocki and Alika Herreshoff’s work serves as a counterbalance, meditative and responsive to the inherent concerns of painting, color, and line (and hinting at, rather than blatant in relation to figuration and intent). Lane Hagood’s approach is scholarly, and rooted in cavernous literary reference which leads to work that both contradicts and acknowledges the post-modern paradox of inescapability from quotation and never-ending intellectual reiteration.

The works that caught my eye and what I immediately felt was...

De Stijl meets De Koonig in a dark alley.

If I Call You And You Pick Up It Will Kill You
Acrylic on canvas
Anthony Record

I imagine Francis Bacon painting dolphins and snowmen until he had an "aw-fuck-it" moment and went all heavy on the brush work.

Lights Out Still Life with Dolphin Posters
oil, acrylic, enamel on panel
Lee Piechocki

I'm pretty sure I spent way too much time playing this video game in the late 80s and at one point the figure in the middle told me to get a degree in liberal arts...

3 Abstract
Gouache on paper
Eric Shaw

 ...and after playing said video game for 18 hours straight, I decided to rearrange my room to reflect my psyche.

Art for Sebastian's Show at Lawndale in Houston...Let's Get Drinks After the Show
Mixed Media
Cody Ledvina

For reasons that I can't even begin to explain, this one reminds me of a lewd send up of Brancusi's "The Kiss".

In the the Fold
Acrylic on canvas
Alika Herreshoff

However, the truly "weird place" in this exhibition may not be the familiar field between figuration and abstraction through which many artists have traipsed, but rather the virtual space in which they collaborated.

Get Flickr with it.