Round 7, Simulacra

Betsy Huete

Since 1979, Lawndale Art Center has been a bastion of the Houston arts community, starting as an extension of the University of Houston and gradually transforming itself into its own organization, eventually becoming one of the premier non-profit art venues in town. Lawndale underwent a major renovation in 2005, and along with it came the Lawndale Artist Studio Program. It is a residency that gives three artists nine months of studio space, a stipend, and an exhibition. Now in its seventh year (hence the exhibition title Round 7), Lawndale’s John M. O’Quinn Gallery is showing the work of residents Domokos Benczedi (including his band Future Blondes 0.0.0.0.), Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk.

Domokos Benczedi has been a staple of the Houston noise and underground music scene for probably the past two decades. He has been involved with everything from current project Future Blondes to Rusted Shut to Black Leather Jesus. The Future Blondes 0.0.0.0. sound, while of course varying from track to track, is hauntingly repetitive and mesmerizing, emanating what can only be described as a sepulchral pixilation. Frustratingly, the strongest components of Benczedi’s work do not appear in Round 7.

As the viewer enters the O’Quinn Gallery, she encounters Sioux Dance (2013), a mostly black and white installation comprising a variety of materials: a large collage print, white washed speakers, and about twenty to thirty salt chlorinator unit covers just to name a few. The installation is set up like a stage—the 8’x5’ collage forms the background, while the speakers and false walls flank the sides and what Benczedi coins as a blueprint floor assemblage covers the floor. With the exception of a video collage on a small TV monitor on the left, it’s a stage where nothing happens, and that’s how all the work feels. He performed original sound work via Future Blondes and brought in other local musical acts on June 8th, but the work without his sound comes across as artifacts or props for a concert, not standing on its own. And the one sound piece, Your Eyes My World (2012), is barely, if at all, audible, competing with Justin Boyd’s sound installation upstairs and Douthey’s barking dog nearby.


Domokos Benczedi, Sioux Dance, 2013, collage print, blueprint floor assemblage w/ recycled salt chlorinator unit covers, white washed Pioneer speakers, vintage amplifier + 8trk/cassette recorder, found broken mirrors, blueprints on moveable walls, video monitor, broken monitors, dimensions variable

Nancy Douthey is a performance and video artist who confronts, utilizes, and mimics various performative and feminist art historical tropes. As the viewer paces across the gallery, he encounters a ninety-degree angle freestanding wall with three video monitors mounted to it, two on adjacent walls and one on the opposite side. The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb) (2013) shows Douthey sitting presumably in a bedroom, closely facing the camera. She is thoroughly, roughly massaging her cheeks and face, staring doe-eyed off into the distance. Her movements recall the bodily performances experimented by Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman of the ‘60s and ends with her face bitch-slapped by what appears to be a male hand. The Yellow Bathroom (Mom, Dad, Superman) (2013) conjures Cindy Sherman as Douthey sits on the edge of her bathtub robed in matronly and floral silk. Again, she faces the camera, crying while mouthing the words “mom” and “dad,” occasionally lip syncing to the accompanying music.


Nancy Douthey, The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb), 2013, 2 minute video loop

While Douthey convincingly melds absurdity and sincerity in these performances (she seems to be legitimately crying in The Yellow Bathroom), her most effective and thought provoking work derives from the piece where she isn’t doing much at all. The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced) (2013) is a bifurcated video loop of two Doutheys side by side, standing (waiting?) on two different sides of the same living room mantle. This time Douthey, neither of them, face the camera, but instead stands at a three quarter stance with her back mostly to the camera, only giving the viewer occasional glances of her profile. While the camera is clearly facing the mirror, it quickly becomes obvious that she is intentionally blocking her reflection with the back of her own head. The Fireplace is reminiscent of Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979), where he photographs a woman facing the mirror. The viewer here is implicated as voyeur, staring at the woman. But the woman confronts the “male gaze,” staring straight back at the viewer. However, Douthey in her piece not only undercuts the viewer’s gaze but also her own. In denying both the gaze and her confrontation of it, Douthey provides a thoughtfully vulnerable and ambivalent portrait of what it is to be a woman and be perceived by others in an era of self-revealing social media and slutcore pop stars.


Nancy Douthey, The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced), 2013, 2 minute video loop

On the opposite end of the gallery one will find Patrick Turk’s The Superorganism: Concrescence and The Superorganism: Entropy (both 2013). Both pieces consist of densely applied paper collages. Microcosms of animals, plant life, and human body parts circulate throughout the collages. The figures pop up three-dimensionally from the background and feel simultaneously anxious, maneuvering through traffic, and frozen, as if these characters are buried like deeply compacted sediment. Both works are mounted on circular pieces of plywood, each nearly four feet in diameter.


Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence,  2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.

Turk, at least according to his statement, hopes for his pieces to be immersive for his audience, “bring(ing) them into an exotic reality where the body becomes more than it seems.” The Superoganism series delivers a far cry from that immersion. On the contrary, it is trite, glittery, and a little dorky, as if Lisa Frank and a biology illustrator bore a lovechild—and it really works. Turk’s clearly labor-intensive process of cutting and collaging feels sweetly heroic, as if he’s hell-bent on narrating a macabre children’s story of the follies and beauty of concurrently living beings.


Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence (detail), 2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.

Round 7 provides a wide range of the kind of work that should be conducted in a residency: work that breaks through, struggles, falls flat, and successfully asks questions. It arouses the curiosity of what will come not only for Domokos Benczedi, Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk, but also for the eighth round of Lawndale residents.

Round 7 runs through June 15 at Lawndale Art Center.

Pan Recommends for the week of May 9 to May 15

Dean Liscum & Robert Boyd

Groove to a DJ set, get in-vigor-ated, join a parade, and get strung along all in the pursuit of art. Here are some but not all of the art events happening this weekend.


THURSDAY

Sound Proof by Peter Lucas at MKT BAR Artist talk at 7 p.m. DJ set 7-9 p.m.
Lucas took the pictures and will DJ, but did he make the fresh baba ganoush next door at the deli counter?

PRH Curatorial Lunchtime Talk series with Marcela Guerrero at Project Row Houses at 12 p.m. Guerrero explores art of the Caribbean and Latin America using Glissant’s theories of creolization. Bring an appetite for knowledge.


FRIDAY

VIM AND VIGOR works by Brandon Araujo, Chris Fulkerson, and Mauricio Menijvar Curated by Paul Middendorf, 6-8 PM at Fresh Arts
Fill up with vim and then get all in-vigor-ated. They promise it won't hurt...much.

Round 7 LAWNDALE 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Artist talks at 6 p.m.
If you're not overwhelmed, you need to get your whelmed checked. Exhibitions include...

Round 7 • DOMOKOS / FUTURE BLONDES 0.0.0.0., Nancy Douthey & Patrick Turk

I'll Send The Message Along The Wires by Justin Boyd Halls

without walls, room to feel in. The door awaits,your return within. by Abhidnya Ghuge

PRECARIOT by Massa Lemu


SATURDAY

The 26th Annual Art Car Parade from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
During the paleolithic period, men made art on the walls of their dwellings. During the oil age in which man practically lives in his car, men make art on the side of theirs. Cars roll at 1 p.m.

TUESDAY

A Length Of String by The Art Guys beginning at 9:00 a.m. until they reach the end.
Starts at White Oak Bayou beginning at near Tidwell at West T.C. Jester, walking south along the bayou to toward I-610.
If the Art Guys were attending this event instead of performing in it, would they bring scissors?

Vote Now!

by Robert Boyd

The Bayou City Art Festival is coming up this weekend, and in among the lawn ornaments and hand-crafted doodads will be some art, including art at the CultureMap booth. And CultureMap is having a contest to vote for the artist to take with them. They are asking you to vote. I did--but it wasn't an easy decision! The artists they have selected are pretty good! For your considerations, the artists are Daniel Anguilu, Debra Barrera, James Ciosek, Daniel Esquivel Brandt, Jonathan Leach, Sandy Tramel, and Patrick Turk. Several of these artists have been reviewed positively here on The Great God Pan Is Dead (which might give you a hint on who I voted for). There are only 13 hours left to vote as I write this, so head on over to the CultureMap page and make your voice heard!

Robert Boyd's 2011 Honorable Mention

All of the shows listed below were excellent, and on a different day, I might have placed any one of them in the top 10.

Lisa Gralnick: The Gold Standard at Center for Contemporary Craft. This was a very interesting show that included sculptures made of plaster and gold--where the percent of gold was determined by how much gold it would take to buy the thing depicted.




Stephanie Toppin's couch in Jim Peterson, Jr.'s garage

Stephanie Toppin's couch. Of all the things associated with the Art Car Parade this year, this is my favorite. After the parade, Toppin's couch was lost for several months until I happened to find it at Jim Peterson, Jr.'s house. Mystery solved!


The Time Travel Research Institute Presents by Patrick Turk at Art League. Instead of his usual dense psychedelic collages, Turk made these pieces have a sense of physical space and even added motion to some. Mindblowing.

Jim Nolan, Today is Tomorrow at Art Palace. Jim Nolan's art is what happens when minimalism goes downscale. Made often from items purchased at 99¢ Only stores, it is the perfect art for our belt-tightening times.


Jim Woodring, Lazy Robinson, charcoal on paper

Jim Woodring and Marc Bell, Walpurgis Afternoon at Lawndale. I'm picking a show I curated, which is a bit unfair. What can I say? I thought it was great--two cartooonists/painters whose work I've admired for decades, and between whom I felt there was a connection. It seemed natural.



Raul Gonzalez, More Work Ahead, ink and spray paint on floor laminate, 2010

Raul Gonzalez at the Caroline Collective. Raul Gonzalez is a real street artist--and by that, he paints Houston's streets and uses as motifs street signs. Indeed, the colors of street signs pervade his work. He has created the vision of Houston that seems most true.


Myke Venable, MV 25 Silver/Scarlet Red/Black, acrylic on canvas, 2011

Myke Venable at Sonia Roesch. The only way these paintings could be more minimal would be to turn them from two or three color paintings to one-color paintings. As a consequence of their minimal content, they lack autonomy--they collaborate, in a sense, with the room they're in. And that's what I like about them.

Southern/Pacific at Lawndale. Really lovely show filled with interesting pieces curated by recent transplant to Houston, Paul Middendorf. This was road-trip art--he picked up art in Portland, Oregon (where he used to live) and Marfa and finally Houston. It was a fine way to introduce Houston art viewers to some interesting out-of-towners.

 
Hagit Barkai, Aisen and Tyson, Oil on canvas, 2010

Hagit Barkai, Resistance at Nau-Haus. Hagit Barkai's paintings linger in my mind. It's not the extreme one, the ones showing highly distressed people--although those are good. It's piece like Aisen and Tyson and Home More or Less that stick with me.


Dennis Harper and Friends, iPageant at the Joanna. This show was a giant performance extravaganza. Dennis Harper constructed some of his patented oversized paper sculptures--this time of a 60s era television soundstage. It was within this construct, aided by multiple closed-circuit televisions, that Harper staged his variety show. I only hope it wasn't a one-time event.

Ward Sanders at Hooks Epstein. San Antonio artist Ward Sanders has had four shows at Hooks-Epstein, but for this one, he added a new element. In addition to his mysterious, lovingly-created boxes, he has a piece of text. It turns out his writing, at least in these short fragments, is excellent. The world of visual art could lose Sanders to the literary world.

Ibsen Espada, Reformulaciones at New Gallery. One of the original Fresh Paint artists, Espada has apparently laid low for a while. This show was a powerful (and hopefully triumphal) return. Muscular abstractions.


Sharon Engelstein's Green Golly got its own room at Pan Y Circos

Pan y Circos at PG Contemporary. Curated by yours truly. We had a huge space for this group show, and it turned out great. I am especially proud to have brought El Dinersito by Jorge Galvan to the attention of Houston's art crowd.

Robert Pruitt, You Are Your Own Twin at Hooks Epstein. Every time I've seen Pruitt's portraits, I've loved them. There seems to be a rising generation of artists and intellectuals who are heavily invested in African American identity and history and simultaneously into science fiction and gaming and other nerdy pursuits. For example, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Robert Pruitt.

Kim Dingle at Front Gallery. The Front Gallery is Houston's newest gallery, and its smallest. The inaugural show, full of oil-sketches of hyper-active girls, was a fantastic beginning.

Lisa Qualls, absence at Koelsch. Here is a highly conceptual show (portraits of an ancestor who left behind no visual image) that is simultaneously highly personal. I found it quite moving.

Mary McCleary Selects

by Robert Boyd

Mary McLeary was chosen by The Art League as Texas Artist of the Year. That meant she got a nice retrospective exibition at the Art League, but also that she was obliged to be the jury on the 2nd annual Gambol show. There were 400 artworks submitted by Art League members, and McCleary chose 39 of them. These were displayed in the back gallery. The other works were displayed salon-style in the hallways and studios of the Art League.

So what we end up with is an interesting opportunity--we see not only the works selected, but also the works rejected. As I looked at Gambol, I was first struck by how many of the works had something in common with McCleary's own work. And that makes sense, that an artist would pick work that came from a similar place as their own. For example, McCleary does a lot of landscapes (or people in landscapes). And this show is full of landscapes.



Daniel Brents, DEPOT



Cary Reeder, Left Behind



Fran Fondren, Morning Glow

These more-or-less traditional landscapes by Fran Fondren, Cary Reeder and Daniel Brents are intriguing in part because you rarely see this kind of work at the Art League (or Lawndale or Diverse Works or CAMH). It's too old-fashioned. And that's regrettable. I find these landscapes quite beautiful and moving in a way. There is something about lone buildings, devoid of human presence (although human presence is always implied by any picture of a building). That lack of people is kind of a blankness onto which viewers can project their own stories, their own memories. That blank screen produces a nostalgia of sorts--at least it does for me. When we think of Edward Hopper, we think of his many pictures of people-less buildings and that feeling.



Nicola Mosley, Falmouth Harbor #1

While Reeder, Fondren and Brents come out of a tradition of matter-or-fact landscapes that includes Hopper and Charles Sheeler, Nicola Mosley is a bit more abstract. It reminds me a little of Richard Deibenkorn, although Mosley doesn't push the abstraction as far as Deibenkorn. But one can view this image as a place or as an arrangement of colors and textures; neither is dominant.

But another aspect of McLeary's art is that it is collaged. The collaged elements are little bits of tubular material (I'm not sure what the stuff is) that she attaches to the canvas. In fatc, I'm not sure whether it would be more appropriate to call it a mosaic or a collage. Either way, it creates a visual density. Even though there is a large image, each McCleary piece is also a collection of tiny elements. And in Gambol, there are several works that fit that description.



Patrick Turk, These Serpents Squeeze Tighter

Patrick Turk is famous for his super-dense collages of repeating fragments of images. These are intense, psychedelic images. The tension between the whole image and the elements is something I can imagine appealing to McCleary.



Fernando Ramirez, SURFIN' USA



Fernando Ramirez, SURFIN' USA detail

I liked these dense, detail-packed drawings by Fernando Ramirez. They remind me of punk artists like Gary Panter. The lack of polish is an expressive tool in such art.



Fernando Ramirez, SHIPPING

I checked out Ramirez's website and came across this statement:

Fernando Ramirez is a post-objectivity- painter, declaring his current body of work exceeds the romantic ideals, and self-involvement of traditional art making. He’s chosen to create “matter-of-fact-ness-drawings”, focused on developing an alter-world- that represents a- simulacra to our living world. 

I don't understand quite what he is getting at here. These drawings are, however, anything but matter-or-fact. In his desire to create an "alter-world," he is creating a bizarre and exotic alternative to our world. Matter-of-fact is the landscaps of Carrie Reader and Daniel Brents above. His work of world-creating reminds me more of Brian Chippendale and Mat Brinkman in both style and content. It's quite impressive.

All of the above works, as heterogeneous as they are, feel connected in my mind to McCleary's own in one way or another. I didn't feel that with Magid Salmi's pieces.



Magid Salmi, GMO Quarentine 5 and GMO Quarentine 6



Magid Salmi, GMO Quarantine 5 detail

Salmi's work is also included in a Peel Gallery show that is currently up. Obviously there is a political component--the titles refer to genetically modified organisms, in this case foods. For those who oppose such foods, one word used to describe them is "frankenfood." Food created in a lab. (This is as opposed to genetic modification through selective breeding and cross-pollination, which has been going on for at least 10,000 years, if not longer.) Our visual image of Frankenstein is Boris Karloff, with bolts coming out of his neck. Salmi has used that visual idea here, putting electronic parts on pieces of fruit. This uses the idea of a cyborg organism as a stand-in for the idea of a genetically-modified organism.

But beyond the political meaning, the work looks great. She gives it an ironic high-tech gleam. The colors are perfect, too.



Kelly Alison, The Falling Man

Kelly Alison is a fixture on the Houston art scene, having been part of Fresh Paint, the 1985 survey of Houston's painters at the MFAH.The image refers to 9-11 (the skyscrapers, the jet, the suit on the man) and perhaps particularly to a photo by Richard Drew of one of the many who jumped from the World Trade Towers to escape the fire of the burning buildings. I is loathe to call this work political (although Alison hasn't shied away from politics in her work in the past). Instead, I see it as a history painting--one of those academic genres that was the most highly esteemed in the 17th and 18th century. (Landscape, along with still-life, was one of the least esteemed genres by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.) One thing that can be said about the genre of history painting is that there are certain events in history that deserve to be painted. This is, in a way, saying that these events should not be forgotten. (And, of course, doing such a painting allows a painter to put his own spin on the event. A Flemish painter would have had a highly different gloss on The Surrender of Breda than Velázquez did in his famous painting, for example.)



Raul Gonzalez, Self-Portrait

Almost equal in size to Alison's painting is this self-portrait by Raul Gonzalez. It was hung directly facing Alison's painting, creating a kind of twisted mirror image. Gonzalez appears to be standing in his studio, with the elements of his painted work behind him, including a "No Trespassing" sign. His work frequently incorporates signage as part of the composition, including using the colors of street signs as the under-painting.



Emily Sloan, Farmhouse Architectural Object I & II

Emily Sloan's two pieces are the only sculptures in the show. I don't think this shows a predilection on McCreary's part for two-dimensional works necessarily. There simply weren't all that many sculptures submitted. (This tends to be the case as well with the Big Show at Lawndale.) These pieces relate to work Sloan has done in the past, like Black and White Picket Fence and Riffle. You know what? I want to see a whole show of these twisty little fences. I like them--I like the subject and the size (about knee-level) and the curviness of them.

And what about the work McCleary didn't select? As I wandered the halls and studios of the Art League, it was obvious that a lot of the works weren't chosen because they weren't very good or very original. And that's OK--a lot of members are members to take classes and hopefully become better artists. They can't all be accomplished artists yet. But there were pieces that were quite interesting to me but that McCleary ultimately eliminated.



Curtis Gannon, Closure Grid

What Curtis Gannon has done with this collage is to take a group of comic book pages, cut holes in them, and layer them on top of one another. But what's interesting to me is that he deliberately chose pages with very conservative panel layouts. Panels are the boxes in which each picture in a comic is contained. Drawing them as squares or rectangles (paralleling the edge of the page) is considered a fairly undynamic way of arranging them. (Panels can, for example, be angled, overlapping, curvy, free-form, or even non-existent.)

For the purpose of this collage, the panels had to be square or rectangular. In each panel, he has cut a hole in the page that mimics the shape of the panel but is a little smaller. The viewer then sees overlapping rectangles, with the content of each panel mostly erased. That said, you can still see a lot of the text--this is because dialogue and narration is usually placed on the edges of a panel. This is especially true in assembly-line created super-hero comics (which are Gannon's sources), where the letterer places the words on after the artist has drawn the picture in each panel.



David Haberman, In Search of the Big Bang

McCleary may have found David Haberman's antic geometric abstraction, In Search of the Big Bang, a little too whimsical to choose. But I liked this fun piece of art.

The Big Show 2011, part 1--Retina Burn

Lawndale's The Big Show is always difficult to write about. It is, inevitably, a visual cacophony. There are 121 artworks in the show by 73 artists. It is impossible for a show like this to coalesce into unified whole. (That's always one of the complaints about the Whitney Biennial.)  The Big Show is always diffuse--the only thing one can say from year to year is that its diffusion takes a particular form (even if that form is complete randomness). This year, it's not random. The show is spinning on an axis and throwing off bits that are far from the axis, but the axis itself is pretty identifiable. The Big Show 2011 pays a lot of attention to large, colorful painting. So how could this happen given the diversity of work submitted? There is a selection of art to choose from (self-selected by the participating artists) and then a curatorial selection from this group. The curator can pick a certain direction, but she is limited by what pieces have been submitted. Given some of the shows curator Larissa Harris has curated at Queens, I don't see a predilection for paintings or bright colors, although she does seem to like "big." So one has to conclude that this year, Houston's paint-slingers submitted a lot of work.


John Earles, Everything We Know Traced in Lines of Lipstick and Fiber Optics, acrylic on canvas, 2011

John Earles has two large colorful paintings in the show, including the 12-feet-wide Everything We Know Traced in Lines of Lipstick and Fiber Optics. That work has a bit of a James Rosenquist vibe to it.


John Earles, I Laughed Until My Head Fell Off, acrylic on canvas, 2011

And in general, the work is shiny and plastic. I don't mean that in a bad way. The hard-edge style of painting, the fragmented incomprehensible objects, the flat planes of color; these qualities signify signify "modern" now just as much as they did when James Rosenquist pioneered this approach. Perhaps at some point in the future, this look will start to seem old-fashioned or nostalgic. For me, it hasn't gotten there yet.


Julon Pinkston, Kermi, acrylic on canvas panel, 2010

Lone Star College Kingwood instructor Julon Pinkston employs a similar approach. The difference is that his objects are a little more recognizable (they are trashed pieces of plastic) and he leaves parts of his canvases white. The white ground visually pushes both the objects and the flat-colored shapes forward. There is a real punch to these compositions.


Julon Pinkston, Circle Game, acrylic on canvas panel, 2010

Not every large painting has a bunch of bright colors. Heather Bause's My Little Pony (Red) has only three colors, but has as much if not more visual intensity as the previous four paintings.


Heather Bause, My Little Pony (Red), acrylic on canvas, 2011

This image comes from the Stanford Binet intelligence test for children. It was a test originally developed shortly after the turn of the last century, but still in use (after many revisions) today. Variations of the test have been used to determine whether incoming soldiers were officer material. Blowing up this image from an earlier version of the test reminds one of the cultural and class biases it contained. Other images, with their middle-class domestic scenes, seem even more biased. That said, a test like this has to measure intelligence within the context of the dominant culture because those taking the test will exist within that culture to some degree or another. Blowing up this card turns it into a striking, poster-like image. It's generic quality belies its somewhat scary bureaucratic social engineering origins.


Brian Keith Gardner, The Unicorn, mixed media on canvas, 2011

Brian Keith Gardner's The Unicorn takes a more-or-less abstract pattern of colors, then overlays it with black-and-white drawing. The drawing is a comic strip detailing the last bout of a masked wrestler called The Unicorn. The panels of the comic strip are roughly square, and they have little intrusions/extrusions that make them look a bit like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Some of the panels are painted over in white, but even with the blank panels, the story is clear. The Unicorn ends his career fighting a wrestler who is unusually violent--he literally beheads the Unicorn in the ring, to the mindless cheers of the audience.


Brian Keith Gardner, The Unicorn detail, mixed media on canvas, 2011

There are various avenues for crossing comics with contemporary art. In this case Gardner has created an actual comic strip and put it into a painting. But the comic he has created is deliberately crude and stupid. He's neither aiming for the soulless slickness of modern super-hero comics nor for the sophisticated expression of a Chris Ware or Lynda Barry. From within the world of comics, this seems closest to Johnny Ryan, who gleefully employs a kind of adolescent expression. Within the art world, a comparison could be made to Paper Rad.


Hogan Kimbrell, Athlete, oil on canvas, 2011

Amusingly, Hogan Kimbrell's realistic (if somewhat idealized) wrestlers were displayed right next to Gardner's ultraviolent wrestling fantasy. It seems exactly the opposite of Gardner's painting in all other respects, except that a comics connection can be made here--the outlined figures and flat, poster-like colors resemble comics (at least comics before Photoshop was invented). But mostly it seems like a poster--putting the figures against a white ground does that. One can imagine bold typography added--"London Olympics 2012."


Tanya Vaughn, Hurrah!, mixed media, acrylic, stain, pint pen, 2011

U.H. art student Tanya Vaughn's painting is basically a political cartoon. It has an easy irony that simplifies a lot of real world things (as political cartoons tend to do).Vaughn is portraying the celebratory mood following the assassination of Bin Laden as hopelessly naive, as exemplified by the statement "Terrorism is Over Now" and the children celebrating. The fact that the children are depicted in an illustrational style that recalls childrens books from the 1950s reinforces the naivete.

Not all the large, colorful canvases come out of a pop or cartoon esthetic. Ya La 'Ford draws inspiration from African fabric designs in her red and gold abstraction La Genesi Del.


Ya La 'Ford, La Genesi Del, mixed media on weathered canvas


Ya La 'Ford, La Genesi Del (detail), mixed media on weathered canvas

According to the artist, there is another painting on the back of this one, but Lawndale didn't have a way to hang it to show both sides. I suppose it could have been hung from the ceiling. In any case, this side is quite handsome--I like the maze-like pattern and the way the gold floats on top of the red.


David P. Gray, The Question, oil on canvas, 2011

Likewise, David P. Gray presents us with bursts of color in his two paintings, but in a realistic, highly rendered style that really stands out in this show. Not that there isn't some pop influence. The setting of the restaurant (some kind of nostalgia themed place where old-fashioned menus and a scooter on a plinth are meant to signal "the '50s") speak to Pop, and those water glasses and creamer containers in the foreground remind me a little of Wayne Thiebaud. If you look at the artwork he has on his website, it is very different. He does watercolors of Mexican subjects, very much infused with Catholicism, that derive from the period in his childhood when his parents moved the family down to Lake Chapala.

But here, he is depicting an all-American scene--guys hanging out, talking in a fake-nostalgia restaurant. What I like is that their conversation is intense--it slices through the weird, unserious setting. I'm pretty sure that the people depicted here are artists. The one of the left looks like Earl Staley (sans eyepatch) and I think the one next to him is H.J. Bott. One could imagine that they are discussing art. It's interesting to imagine that art would be the subject there in what seems like an uncongenial, artless chain restaurant. Of course, I could be misinterpreting it all-together. Still, I like it--this is a complex composition, and Gray really pulls it off. But also the subject--conversation among friends--is rare and wonderful.


David P. Gray, Harvey Takes Decaf, oil on canvas, 2011

Harvey Takes Decaf has most of the merits of The Question, but it feels more like a snapshot than the former painting, which has (to my eyes) deeper implications about what these are discussing and their relationships to one another.

Some of the works in the show were colorful, large and/or paintings, but not all three. Nonetheless, their presence contributed to the overall look of the show. For example, psychedelic collage artist Patrick Turk had a large work in the show, next to two smaller works. But the smaller works almost blew the larger off the wall.


Patrick Turk, The Scraptacularium Presents Experiments in Mysticism #8, collage on panel, 2011

What keeps this from being merely a well-executed piece of psychedelic art is double figure on the right--a 1930s beauty with a bob hairstyle, gripping in panic the arm of an unseen person. I would guess it was the cover of a pulp magazine, the the source of her terror was something concrete. In Turk's hands, the terror is the sublime or the infinite as evoked by psychedelic drugs.


Bill Fester, Farming in a Different Galaxy, fractal on aluminum, 2011

A fellow contemplator of the psychedelic sublime--this time on a galactic scale--is Bill Fester. As far as I can tell, Fester produces his fractal designs on a computer using a piece of software called UltraFractal. He then somehow prints the images on aluminum. The result is an intensely colored, geometrically complex image.

The thing is, this is just a sampling of the large, colorful painted works in the show. Alexine O. Stevens created a brilliantly colored landscape influenced, perhaps, by Chinese painting.


Alexine O. Stevens, Rain, acrylic, oil and pastel, 2010

Fred Allen is the third of the Rosenquist brigade with these two paintings:


Fred Allen, Smokin', Billboard enamel on recycled billboard vinyl, 2010

Gonzo247 has a huge shaped graffiti piece in the entryway, Introducing Mr. Pickle. Mark Benham's paintings are the definition of retina burn. And there's more. But if you want to see them, you'll have to go to Lawndale (or at the very least, check out Lawndale's Flickr photostream.)

But even if the overwhelming impression is colorful! big! painting!, there is a bunch of work that swims in very different directions. I'll discuss some of those pieces--which include my favorite pieces from the exhibit--in the next installment of this review.