Pan Recommends for the week of April 25 to May 1

Robert Boyd

Lots of stuff happening this weekend in the Colquitt and Montrose galleries, but also in spaces we don't hear from that often. Here are a few of the things that caught our eye.

THURSDAY



Nnnnnnnnooooooooooooo by Carrie Cook at the Project Gallery at the UH School of Art, 6-9 pm. I liked her work at the MFA Thesis show, so I expect that this one will be pretty good as well.


Untitled, Victor Vasarely, 37.5" x 38.875", silkscreen

Optical Spaces: The Art of Victor Vasarely at the Museum of Printing History, 6 pm. Vasarely was an artist whose work seemed destined for the walls of dorm rooms. Cosmic eye-candy to be sure, and fun to look at for that reason.

FRIDAY


Tom Huck's THE HILLBILLY KAMA SUTRA at Burning Bones Press, 6 pm. I'm not sure I can add much to what Huck says in this video except to recommend you crank up the Southern Culture on the Skids and check this show out.


Marcelyn McNeil, Lemonworld, 54"x52", oil on canvas

Marcelyn McNeil: Lemonworld at Anya Tish Gallery at 6 pm. I like the way McNeil balances geometric abstraction and expressive brushwork. Her paintings have a beautiful rough-hewn feel.


Anastasia Pelias, Elaine, for Elaine (shade grey, translucent yellow, payne’s grey), 2013 oil on canvas, one painting in two pieces, 72 x 144 inches

Anastasia Pelias: Ritual Devotion at Zoya Tommy Contemporary, 6 pm. And if you need more abstraction, go across the hall to Zoya Tommy and check out New Orleans painter Anastasia Pelias.


University of Houston School of Art: Annual BFA Student Exhibition at the Blaffer Art Museum, 6 pm. You saw the MFA Thesis show--now come out and see what the undergrads have been doing.


still from Latham Zearfoss's “Myth of My Anchestors”

Stinky Pinky: a Screening of Experimental Queer Shorts featuring films by Kristin Anchor, Rahne Alexander, Zach Meyer, Dorian Bonelli, Tessa Siddle, Chris Vargas, Matt Wolf, & Latham Zearfoss at Skydive from 8 to 11 pm. Skydive is back with a short film program.

SATURDAY


Burning Bones Press & AIGA's: It Came From The Bayou! featuring Tom Huck, Cannonball Press and Dennis McNett, Sean Starwars, The Amazing Hancock Brothers, Workhorse Printmakers and Burning Bones Press at The Continental Club , noon to 6 pm. Printmaking demos, lots of prints, and the sounds of DJ PsychedelicSexPanther--sounds like a high energy event.


Russell Prince, The Silver Chair, 2012, mixed media collage, 20X30”

Russell Prince: Pastmodern at Front Gallery 4–6 pm. Collagist Russell Prince is a show curated by Jay Wehnert from Intuitive Eye.



Kelley Devine: Face Face at Winter Street Studios Gallery, 5-9 pm. Giant faces give viewers cold appraising gazes in the art of Kelley Divine, on view at Winter Street.



Obscure Workings: Anthony J Suber at Commerce Street Gallery, 6 pm. An artist I have never heard of, but I liked the artwork on his website.


Troy Dugas, Falstaff, 2009 Beer labels, 60 x 60" -- this old piece will probably not be in the show, but it's typical of Dugas's work  

Troy Dugas: Modernized for Mildness and Rusty Scruby: Sink Sketches in the micro space at McMurtrey Gallery, 6 pm. Two artists who take printed material, cut it up, and make visuallydazzling new things out of it--they seem like a natural pairing.

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.