Troy Dugas's Product-label Mandalas

Robert Boyd



Troy Dugas, Distilled Pride, 2012, vintage product labels on wood panel, 48" x 48"

Troy Dugas describes the work in his current show at McMurtey Gallery like this:

My collages are made from vintage product labels purchased in unused bundles. The material is cut or shredded then arranged onto flat surfaces (paper, canvas, or wood) to produce artwork that appear woven. Repetition, pattern, precision, and scale are used to distract from the original purpose of the label to sell a product. The essential elements of color, shape, and line are utilized in a new way, and the altered context of the source material provides new meaning. The immediacy of the graphic label is substituted with aesthetic sensation and contemplation. There is a certain mischievous pleasure in the process of this transformation, and at the same time, a kind of meditation.

The sentence  "Repetition, pattern, precision, and scale are used to distract from the original purpose of the label to sell a product" is ironic--after all, these collages are in fact products for sale in a gallery. But what interests me is that these labels are themselves the product of artists. Designers toil endless hours to make product labels that will catch the eye, that will be associated with the product in the mind of the consumer, etc. These artists are often not considered artists because of the nakedly commercial nature of their work--but as I mention above, artwork you see in a gallery or at an art fair is just as much merchandise as the products whose labels Dugan used.

Given the graphic richness of product labels, it's not surprising that contemporary artists make work based around them. Andy Warhol didn't make paintings of Campbell's Soup cans and sculptures of Brillo boxes merely because of their banal ubiquity--he was attracted to their graphic strength as well. In fact, the designer of the Brillo box, James Harvey, was himself an abstract expressionist painter. Critic Irving Sandler relates a story about Harvey and Warhol in his memoir, A Sweeper-Up After Artists. He had teased Harvey about Warhol's appropriation and in response, Harvey sent him a signed box of Brillo as a gag gift. When Warhol saw it, he immediately called Harvey and offered a trade, a signed Brillo box for a Brillo Box. And Warhol was far from the only artist to work with product labels. In fact, there are other artists who use product labels to create design-heavy colleges, similar to Dugan's. I recently saw some by Alison Foshee at the Pearl Fincher Museum. And Al Souza has made collages of cigar bands.



Troy Dugas, The Finch, 2012, vintage liquor labels on wood panel, 48" x 48"

Most of Dugas's collages are circles inscribed in a square (The Finch is an exception). This gives them the look of a mandala. That adds a layer of irony to the work--staring at them could be an aid to meditation if they were used as mandalas, and yet the hustle and bustle of consumer culture is the opposite of meditative, it is the essence of being in the material world, of being in the world of Māyā. Is Dugas suggesting that enlightenment can be found in consumer culture? He speaks of the meditative nature of the work, after all. (One is reminded of the Zippy the Pinhead comic by Bill Griffith in which, at the suggestion of Zippy, Buddhist monks start meditating in front of spinning washing machines at a laundromat--which with their circle-in-a-square design also resemble mandalas.)



Troy Dugas, Wurtzberger, 2012, beer labels on wood panel, 48" x 48"

Adding to the irony is that many of the labels Dugan uses are beer labels or liquor bottle labels. Perhaps starring at one of these while intoxicated will aid a viewer in having an epiphany. "It's coming through a crack in the wall / on a visionary flood of alcohol." (from "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen)



Troy Dugas, Alexander Keiths, 2012, beer labels on wood panel, 48" x 48"

I find Dugan's collages quite beautiful, perhaps all the more so because I suspect they will fade pretty quickly. The paper used on produce labels is not the best--exposed to oxygen they will yellow--and the inks, particularly the blue and black inks, used in commercial printing have a tendency to fade. When you look at old collages (those by Kurt Schwitters displayed at the Menil last year, for example), you see the faded, yellowed remnants of something that must have been quite bright and vivid when originally made. That gives this kind of a work a poignancy.


Troy Dugas, Alexander Keiths (detail), 2012, beer labels on wood panel, 48" x 48"

But they won't fade for many years, and you can see them now in their prime at McMurtrey Gallery through October 13.

Safari to the Suburbs 1: Luxuriant Refuse at the Pearl Fincher Museum

by Robert Boyd

I live in the suburbs. I know there are art-lovers here, but we are fairly uncommon--compared to those who live in hipper inner city neighborhoods. We are less concentrated in the population for the simple reason that the suburbs themselves are less concentrated. The suburbs place a high premium on outward conformity, so it's hard to tell who's artsy. Deeper inside the city, people are more likely to wear their artsiness outwardly--in their lawn art, their art cars, their fashions, their tattoos and hairstyles. But we suburbanites keep that stuff inside the walls of our homes. There are exceptions--the suburbs are too vast to be homogenous. But the problem with the suburbs is that there isn't enough of a concentration of artistic types to encourage arts institutions to form. Few people start galleries in the 'burbs. We hardly have any arts institutions.

But even so, there are exceptions. The Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Art is one I've written about before. Located in Spring, it is near Steubner-Airline just north of FM 1960 on Cypresswood Dr. It's in a neighborhood that appears to be fairly upper-middle-class. The houses are the brick generica favored by Houston developers. Just to give you an idea of how spread out things are up there, the Woodlands is about 14 miles from the Pearl Fincher.  Nonetheless, the Pearl Fincher has community support--that can be seen by their well-attended openings, and their website claims that they have over 2000 donors. (They are not a 501(c)3 organization, so their finances are not reported publicly. Correction: They are a 501(c)3, but the name of the non-profit is the Cypress Creek Fine Art Association, not the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Art.)

Most of their previous exhibits have been exhibits by local artists (including student shows) or exhibits culled from the collections of local collectors. This seems like a good exhibition strategy for a young (established in 2008) suburban museum. It's an approach that promotes buy-in from the local artistic community. (Indeed, the Pearl Fincher has had a series of shows with the subtitle "Northwest Houston Collects".) But it's not a viable long-term strategy, because once you have that buy-in, you need to occasionally show things that are not from your own backyard. You're nurturing a local scene, and that means paying attention to that local scene, which the Pearl Fincher is doing well, but it also means injecting new ideas into that scene.

So I was excited when I heard about Luxuriant Refuse, a contemporary group show curated by Melissa Grobmyer and featuring the work of Adela Andea, Johnston Foster, Alison Foshee, Sarah Frost, Gwyneth Leech, Shawne Major, Aurora Robson, Betsabeé Romero, and Paul Villinski.


Aurora Robson, Belch (aka Tarball), 2009, discarded PET bottles, tinted polycrylic, rivets, steel armature, mica powder

Aurora Robson's work may be familiar to Houstonians from The Great Indoors, her installation at the Rice Gallery, or her installation at the Rice Recreation and Wellness Center. Those colorful pieces contrast to this large black encrusted sphere, floating slightly above eye-level like a menacing alien spacecraft.


Adela Andea, Bioluminescence, 2012, pool noodles and cold cathode fluorescent lights mounted on wire mesh

Equally alien, but much more colorful is Bioluminescence by  Adela Andea. I question the categorization of pool noodles as refuse--is she actually making sculpture out of thrown-away materials, or did she buy a bunch of pool noodles new? But who cares? It's a pretty work and it's something I haven't really seen before at the Pearl Fincher--a site specific installation. (I know Andea has presented this work elsewhere, but I suspect it varies depending on the place of installation.)


Johnston Foster, River Euphrates, 2004, traffic cones, wood, plastic trash cans, duct tape, Venetian blinds

Johnston Foster's work--animals assembled from castaway plastic detritus--fits the theme of the show better. River Euphrates, a rhino made out of traffic cones, was a crowd-pleaser. The inclusion of the oxpeckers on the rhino's back was a nice touch.

The thing with pieces like River Euphrates, Bioluminescence and Belch (aka Tarball) is that they look cool. One could imagine someone curating a show of art made of trash and debris that would have been much more austere, more intellectual, more challenging. The choice here was to be accessible. Is the audience being condescended to? Is there a calculation that this suburban audience might not appreciate more difficult work? Or to put it another way, is there a deliberate choice not to alienate the audience?

(Years ago, when I worked for The Comics Journal, we were about to run an interview with cartoonist Paul Chadwick, the creator of a comic called Concrete. I mentioned to one of the editors that to me, Chadwick seemed totally mainstream and therefore should not be included in our magazine. This editor wisely responded, "To you and me he may seem mainstream, but there are many readers for whom Chadwick is quite radical." This has stuck with me and seems appropos here.)


Alison Foshee, Ivanhoe, 2012, labels on canvas

The artists in this show veer between those who create work that is pretty and those whose work makes you think, "Wow, that's amazing." (Or sometimes both.) Alison Foshee uses product labels to create her beautiful, somewhat abstract flowers. 


Betsabeé Romero, 2007, Tire, carved rubber truck tire


Betsabeé Romero, 2007, Tire, carved rubber truck tire

Betsabeé Romero's Tire belongs more in the "wow" category. Houstonians may remember his work which was included in the show Cosmopolitan Routes: Houston Collects Latin American Art at the MFAH.


Sarah Frost, Sign Off, 2011, discarded computer keyboard keys

Sarah Frost is also one of the "wow" artists. Sign-Off, like many of her pieces, is composed of old computer keyboard keys. These keys are not only trash (and therefore appropriate for inclusion in this exhibit), but they're obsolete as well. Sign-Off is a formal work of light and dark, but it is also a reminder of how we produce millions of these little things knowing that most will be thrown away after at most a few years.

Frost was one of the stand-out artists at the Houston Fine Art Fair last year, and her piece there was one of the ones that sold. (I will return to the subject of the HFAF below.)


Paul Villinski, Consonance, 1993-2006, gold leaf on found work gloves

Paul Villinski's Consonance is one work that is neither "pretty" nor "wow," and to me is perhaps the most intriguing work in the show. It combines the grungy (old work gloves) with the glamorous (gold leaf). The seven gloves are arranged horizontally so that the boundary between glove and gold leaf forms a kind of horizon line. He has, in a sense, created a landscape. This piece is from a series he did with gloves where he combined the sweaty, dirty work glove with some elegant addition, like gold leaf or embroidery.

I mentioned the Houston Fine Art Fair earlier. They sponsored this exhibit and had promotional material available for attendees on opening night. In addition, curator Melissa Grobmyer is a partner with M.K.G. Art Management, LLC., a private company that provides art acquisition and divestment services, appraisals, art inventory management, art leases and corporate archival services. Now it's not unusual for a museum show to be sponsored by a private company. It's the cost we have to pay to see exhibits in a country where the government doesn't typically pay the bills for art museums. But Luxuriant Refuse is a little different--both Hamptons Expo Group (parent company of HFAF) and M.K.G. are companies in the art business. And doing a show like this is a way to drum up business for themselves.

In fact, I think it's kind of brilliant (if ethically shaky). We know there are a lot of well-off people in North Houston. Some of them are into art, and the Pearl Fincher Museum has been cultivating those art-lovers for the past four years. M.K.G. would no doubt like to serve as art consultant for energy company executives in the Woodlands. HFAF would like the collectors who loan work to the Pearl Fincher--as well as aspirational collectors--to visit the art fair this September. I have no idea what deal was made between Hamptons Expo Group and the Pearl Fincher or between M.K.G. and the Pearl Fincher. But on the face of it, each party benefits. M.K.G. and HFAF get access to potential clients while the Pearl Fincher gets a very nice art exhibit. However, the exhibit is also risky for the Pearl Fincher--it's possible that people will see the museum as a shill for the two commercial enterprises. (Tyler Green would have a meltdown over this.)

I'm not sure how I feel. The blatant combination of art business and art museum feels a little skeevy. But I suspect that without the help of M.K.G. and Hamptons Expo Group, the Pearl Fincher would have found it difficult to mount a show like Luxurient Refuse. And that would have been a shame. It's the kind of show that can ease skeptical people into contemporary art. And I think this is an important task for museums--particularly those like the Pearl Fincher Museum located in the vast suburban plain far from the art center.