ROA's Ark

ROA
2010
East Village, New York City
I admire skillful street art, but I rarely feel compelled to photograph it. In early 2010, however, when I came upon the starling mural pictured above, I immediately reached for my camera. At the time, I didn't know anything about the artist; months later, I recognized the muralist's hand in an image I came across online. ROA, a Belgian artist whose animals adorn structures on four continents, is a rising star among street art aficionados.


ROA
2010
London, England
Admittedly, my love of natural history and enthusiasm for animal imagery predispose me to ROA fandom, but the artist's bold, black-and-white technique is distinct and compelling, and most of his mural projects exhibit a clever site-specificity. This attention to location is most often compositional -- for example, the neck of a Limpkin-like bird passes between two windows on a building in Brooklyn, New York, with the bird's body below and the head above -- but ROA's strongest pieces are also conceptually playful: in Ancona, Italy, he painted a disheveled cormorant, a type of water bird, on the side of a large boat; elsewhere, a mole emerges from a pile of bricks; and a desiccated fish is painted on the side of a trailer near California's Salton Sea, a large salt lake in which most fish species are unable to survive. An enthusiastic amateur naturalist, I appreciate the context-appropriate nature of these works.


ROA
2010
Zaragoza, Spain
Unfortunately, ROA doesn't always paint his creatures in or near their natural habitat. I love his giant anteater, pictured trotting along the side of a single-story building in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, but I wonder if the artist realizes that the species is extirpated north of Honduras. Still, because giant anteater fossils have been found in northern Mexico, let's give the artist the benefit of the doubt and interpret this piece as an observation about ecological change. A stylized blue whale rising from a sea of grass outside an abandoned factory in Moscow, Russia, however, is too far from an ocean to be rationalized. Its incongruity is amusing and the image is beautifully crafted, but the piece lacks the impact of ROA's more considerate efforts. No worries. ROA's terrific Virginia opossum in downtown Los Angeles, its prehensile tail wrapped around a stretch of the building's brickwork, more than makes up for the misplaced whale!

While my fondness for natural history makes me an unusually nit-picky viewer, it also means that I'm especially excited by the urban and exurban placement of ROA's rats, squirrels, starlings, herons, raccoons, cormorants, and skunks. These animals are hardy and adaptable, and have proven able to thrive in ecosystems dominated by human habitation. Many people dismiss these creatures as pests, but their presence in our lives is of significant value. As we become an evermore urban species, they are our most immediate connection to the undomesticated, non-human world. In this respect, ROA's murals are portraits of our closest neighbors.


ROA
From the "NUART Landmark Series"
2010
Stavanger, Norway
Some of ROA's more elaborate murals depict great piles of dead animals. These call to mind the tables laden with rotting fruit, hunted game, and skulls that appear in many 15th century Northern European vanitas ("emptiness"), memento mori ("remember your mortality"), and ars moriendi ("art of dying") still life paintings. As their names suggest, all of these allegorical works were created as nods to death's inevitability. It seems these themes preoccupy ROA, too. One of his best memento mori works is located in Stavanger, Norway. Lifeless squirrels, rats, rabbits, and herons are heaped at the foot of an old warehouse, with the limp necks of the herons apparently tied to cords on the wall's face (should we call this reverse trompe l'oeil?) In Mexico City, ROA adds a raccoon, armadillo, and skunk.


ROA
2011
Mexico City, Mexico
These murals will seem grotesque and bleak to some viewers, but they aim to inspire by reminding us that life is transitory. The sentiment was expressed well by Steve Jobs during his 2005 Stanford University commencement address, a speech that, in the wake of Jobs' untimely death from cancer, has been making Internet rounds. Jobs said,

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."

In many respects, ROA's works are the less refined kin of Walton Ford's paintings. Both artists address mortality and the relationship of humanity to other animal species with humor and finesse, but ROA's pictures are less layered with art historical and natural history references; as a result, they're more accessible and immediately gratifying.

Based on the images he shares on his Flickr photostream, the talented 30-something has at least five murals in San Francisco. Let's hope that he returns to the Bay Area and contributes more of his handiwork to our landscape.

Lowbrow Meets Highbrow

Issue of Juxtapoz Magazine
Cover art by Shepard Fairy

"A frog is either lowbrow or highbrow.

If you catch it, it's low. If you order it in a French restaurant, it's high."

-Unidentified chef, from Burkhard Bilger's Noodling for Flatheads

In 2007, commenting on the blog PaintersNYC, artist Kelli Williams observed that it's hard to be a Juxtapoz artist "in an ArtForum world." Juxtapoz is a popular magazine dedicated to showcasing contemporary "lowbrow art." It was founded by the artist Robert Williams in 1994. The "ArtForum world" of Kelli William's statement references the magazine of that name, but also the "high art" scene it covers, of which New York City, for the time being, remains an - if not the - epicenter. Until recently, the artwork featured in ArtForum was very different from that seen in the pages of Juxtapoz. Juxtapoz is representative of the Los Angeles art scene, and the U.S. west coast scene more generally, where the aesthetics of pop surrealism, folk art, post-graffiti, or street art are wholly embraced.

But artwork infused by Juxtapoz's colorful spirit is no longer uncommon in New York galleries. Andrew Schoultz, Tim Biskup, and Jeff Soto, talented west coast artists regularly lauded in the pages of Juxtapoz, today exhibit with the Morgan Lehman and Jonathan Levine galleries, and influential post-graffiti artist Barry "Twist" McGee is represented by the renowned Deitch Projects. Jonathan Levine makes plain his dedication to the post-graffiti aesthetic; his gallery's website states that its mission is to exhibit "work influenced by illustration, comic books, graffiti art and pop imagery." Perhaps it's no longer so hard, then, to be a Juxtapoz artist "in an ArtForum world"?

But, more importantly, does lowbrow art require the affirmation of the "high art" world - for easy contrast, let's call it highbrow art - in order to be considered mainstream or legitimate? If so, what exactly is the cultural significance of highbrow art to the world at large?


Jeff Soto
"Purple Heart"
2007
Acrylic on wood
12 x 12 inches
The commercial success of books like Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture and Wall and Piece, the latest offering from the infamous British artist, Banksy, suggest that pop surrealism, post-graffiti, and street art succeed in connecting with the multitudes. On the other hand, it's an uncontroversial fact that highbrow art generally doesn't move the masses (with the exception of its remarkable ability to offend the religious sensibilities of the Christian Right and certain mayors). But highbrow art doesn't simply fail to connect with the general population; the fact is, most folks sneer at, mistrust, or resent ArtForum's world.

Perhaps because they feel beleaguered by popular tastes, many players in the world of highbrow art - artists, gallerists, critics, and curators alike - reject the influx of pop surrealism and post-graffiti flavor. But their objections will inevitably prove inconsequential; as the Borg of "Star Trek" put it, "resistance is futile." Even if some of the more esoteric subcultures of the Juxtapoz arena - Tiki culture, for example - are unlikely to find a toehold in the world of "high art," the graphic influences common to post-graffiti work already inform the paintings of contemporary art world darlings like Dana Schutz, Marcel Dzama, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Ryan McGuinness, Lisa Yuskavage, Yoshitomo Nara, and Jules de Balincourt. (In fact, Dzama and McGuinness have been featured in Juxtapoz; it won't be long before other celebrated highbrow artists are, too. One wonders if the lowbrow label will be applicable for much longer.) And then there are artists like Judith Schaechter, whose stained glass works were lauded in the pages of Juxtapoz years before her work hung in the Whitney Museum or before she received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.


Judith Schaechter
"Hyena Snake Comet"
2004-2008
Stained glass
30 x 33 inches
Much of the highbrow resistance to pop surrealism and post-graffiti is rooted in the self-identified elites' distrust of populism. Comic books and strips are intended for mass consumption, but graffiti is unquestionably the most populist of the lowbrow tributaries. No art form has fewer barriers to entry; all you need is a can of spray paint and a little chutzpah. Ask someone knowledgeable about the subject to relate the history of modern graffiti, and you'll likely hear an abridged version, one that begins in the 1970s, in and around New York City's Bronx River Houses, and runs parallel to the development of hip hop. City funding for arts and culture programs was pitifully low at the time, and enterprising teens looked for new ways to entertain and express themselves. As Lady Pink, an influential graffiti artist of the late 1970s and 1980s, explains, graffiti was the most available "forum for free speech."

Of course, the human urge to make marks predates the Bronx River Houses by millennia. Our ancestors depicted their quarry on cave walls and, more recently, citizens of ancient Rome scribbled their political opinions on market stalls (hence the word's etymology, from the Italian graffiare, meaning "to scratch or scribble.") But during the early days of modern graffiti's ascendancy, practitioners prioritized ego over observation or socio-political commentary. The pioneers of the 1970s and 1980s graffiti scenes in New York City and Philadelphia - Taki 183, StayHigh 149, Cat 161, and Cornbread, among others - were primarily known for their "tags," stylized monikers spray painted on walls and subway cars. They vied for renown by tagging as many surfaces as they could, and walls that were difficult to access had a special cache. The competitive behavior of these early graffiti "artists" might be best described as base scent marking, activity essentially indistinguishable from the industry of the bored high school student who scratches "(x) was here" on the wall of the bathroom stall. Fortunately, as more artists entered the nascent graffiti scene, such adolescent "battling" became insufficient impetus; soon, the egotistical tag evolved into something more colorful and complex. Artists added characters, often comic in nature, a result of their limited palettes and time frame, and, before long, these characters evolved into "pieces" (short for masterpieces). The best graffiti artists came to value style and artistry as much as placement.

The conceptual and social strengths of graffiti and street art are rooted in the artists' acceptance of temporality and his or her desire to engage the environment and citizenry directly. As Simon Hattenstone, a features writer for The Manchester Guardian, writes, "Since spotting my first few Banksies I have been desperately seeking out more. They make me smile and feel optimistic about the possibilities of shared dreams and common ownership." Insofar as it is truly democratic, the street artist's approach is fundamentally distinct from that of those who aspire to "high art" success. "Fine artists" are essentially aristocratic in inclination. They are the elites who operate within the context of "high art" institutions; their work is most often viewed in semi-sacred, unlived in spaces, by people who talk about the work in reverent whispers. Street art, by contrast, is viewed by everybody who happens past the artwork. But, today, as the post-graffiti movement sees many of its more celebrated artists entering the "high art" sphere, the populist flavoring of the culture is eroding.


Banksy
"Balloongirl"
Artwork on West Bank barrier between Israel and the West Bank
2005
Is the aesthetic melting pot a bad thing? The answer depends on your perspective, of course; personally, I'm all for it. Like many contemporary artists, I'm not alone in feeling that my artwork and aesthetic inclinations plant a standard somewhere between the poles of Juxtapoz and ArtForum. Just as I feel torn between my rural roots and the creative community and energy of city life, so too am I drawn to elements of both art orbits, east and west, highbrow and lowbrow. I live and work in New York, so I've cultivated an appreciation for the importance of conceptual heft. But I'm also an erstwhile subscriber to Juxtapoz who, in my youth, eagerly thumbed through the pages of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, read fantasy novels and comic books, and honed my drawing chops by copying from comic strips. Perhaps I'm biased, then, but it seems that aesthetic commingling introduces hybrid vigor into otherwise "inbred" scenes.

Too many circles of the "high art" world are poisoned by intellectual pretension, obscurantism, and exclusivity. The ArtForum world is principally concerned with auction results and art historical significance. In east coast MFA programs, the mills of the contemporary "high art" world, a common question asked of students is, "Where does your work fit in the historical trajectory?" Indeed, at great cost to social legitimacy, the "high art" world has prioritized originality and artistic genealogy.

Much of the "lowbrow" scene, by contrast, is blighted by the artists' focus on disposable pop culture, their willingness to cozy up to the marketing machine, and their populist posturing. In an interview with Juxtapoz, one young artist said,

"When it comes right down to it, I draw the stuff I like, and people can take it all for whatever they want. I would say that 95 percent is liking big boobs and butts, the other five percent is brain farts that end up in a sketchbook that later ends up as a painting or whatever."

Although I wrote down this quotation without recording the artist's name, I do recall appreciating some of his graphic skill. Still, when I'm confronted with such a thoughtless statement, I can appreciate the animus that brooding, theory-oriented types have for lowbrow art. Where is the evidence of this young artist's vocational mindfulness, his rigorous passion, his poetic sensibility? Of course, his defenders would likely praise his candor, but, in truth, he's posturing as much as the bespectacled, black-clad fellow who insists in his jargon-laden artist statement that Jacques Derrida informs all of his output.


Marcel Dzama
"Untitled"
2005
Watercolor on paper
14 x 11 inches
Despite haughty sneers from individuals on both sides, it seems to me that the transition that so many post-graffiti artists are making, from the streets to the galleries, could (and should) help create a less sectarian art world. The selfish pretensions of the highbrow art world could be tempered by an influx of no-nonsense, illustrative exuberance, and the lowbrow art world could jettison some of their conceptual superficiality by taking the philosophical and moral obligations of their vocation more seriously. That is, in any case, my hope.

Image credits: Juxtapoz cover image ripped from Rotofugi.com;; Jeff Soto image ripped from the Jonathan Levine Gallery website; Judith Schaechter image ripped from the artist's website; Banksy image ripped from the Brian Sewell Art Directory; Marcel Dzama image ripped from David Zwirner website

Walking with the wind

Tim Knowles
"Windwalk #2 - Charing Cross"
Helmet
2008

For his "Windwalk - 5 Walks from Charing Cross" project, artist Tim Knowles engineered a helmet with a sail-like wind vane, small video camera and GPS device, then wandered the streets of central London, his path determined solely by the wind. As Knowles crosses major thoroughfares, where the wind enters the wider channel via various tributaries, his path hitches and tacks erratically. If a gust of wind blows from the opposite direction, he spins about face, and he sometimes circles upon an earlier position.

In at least two of the videos that document his wind walks, Knowles is led into a cul de sac of swirling wind, where he finds himself temporarily trapped with light-weight street debris, including plastic bags and leaves. In these situations, or when he is directed into a wall, Knowles waits patiently for the wind to change direction and again grant him headway.

The artist Bernard Buffet wrote, "I prevent myself from thinking in order to be able to live." Although Buffet presumably referred to the particularly European struggle to persevere in a world shadowed by acute suffering and inhumane activity (he made the declaration in 1948, after an adolescence in occupied France), the statement can also be understood as an endorsement of Zen's "mind of no mind," or mushin no shin. Regardless of their geographic or religious provenance, meditative practices commonly encourage practitioners to banish thought from the mind so that they might experience transcendence or some heightened sense of being.

Similarly, the 20th century aesthetic theorists Alfred North Whitehead and John Dewey believed that there is a crucial distinction between the aesthetic and rational realms. Dewey argued that the aesthetic province is that of the "live animal" or unmediated, natural experience. In his landmark book Art As Experience, Dewey writes,

"Life goes on in an environment; not merely in it but because of it, through interaction with it. No creature lives merely under the skin; its subcutaneous organs are means of connection with what lies beyond its bodily frame, and to which, in order to live, it must adjust itself, by accommodation and defense but also by conquest. At every moment, the living creature is exposed to dangers from its surroundings, and at every moment, it must draw upon something in its surroundings to satisfy its needs. The career and destiny of a living being are bound up with its interchanges with its environment, not externally but in the most intimate way."

Elsewhere, Dewey states more plainly, "to grasp the sources of aesthetic experience it is necessary to have recourse to animal life below the human scale." The life Dewey describes, the realm of the "live animal" and of true aesthetic experience, is akin to Zen's mushin no shin.

The late Irish philosopher and poet John O'Donohue described dance as a reclamation of our animal nature. He wrote,

"When you walk into the mood of wind, it cleanses your mind and invigorates your body. It feels as if the wind would love you to dance...The body gives itself away playfully to the rhythm of the music; the burden of consciousness becomes suspended. For a while the innocence of the dance claims you completely as the mind relents and the body becomes its own celebration."

Knowles' "Windwalks" allow him access to the realm of Dewey's "live animal" and of O'Donohue's celebratory body; the artist relinquishes control by bypassing the brain's self-conscious helmsman. The wind meanders London's streets and Knowles follows; if he is the dancer, the wind is his choreographer. The artist is compelled by the wind's whim.

But, in allowing himself to be guided by an external force, Knowles doesn't simply provide viewers with an often humorous and poetic take on Dewey's philosophy of essential aesthetic experience. His "Wind Walks" resonate on several levels, and perhaps the most vital subtext is one of openness to new experience and new ideas.

Knowles provides us with a 21st century model of citizenship. He explores Charing Cross in a novel way; in doing so, he is provided with a fundamentally new appreciation for and knowledge of a seemingly familiar London neighborhood. In our rapidly globalizing world, we'd do well to emulate Knowles' willingness to look again for the first time. As T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem "Little Gidding,"

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

"Windwalk - 5 Walks from Charing Cross" was seen in the Bitforms Gallery exhibition, "Tim Knowles and Pe Lang + Zimoun: Unpredictable Forms of Sound and Motion," recently on view in New York City.

Photo credits: images ripped from The Cyborg's Picnic and VVVORK

Gallery Report: December 5th, 2007

Banksy at Vanina Holasek


Banksy
"Because I'm Worthless"
Limited edition print

Vanina Holasek: If you don't know who Banksy is, you're out of touch with contemporary art and popular culture. The British graffiti artist and provocateur straddles the divide between high and low art and, not surprisingly, his doing so is not to everybody's liking. In the July 5, 2007 edition of The Guardian, critic Jonathan Jones asks if Banksy is "really much more than a prankster with a spray can?" 1,000 words later, Jones concludes that Banksy "is a background artist," making "art for people who think that artists are charlatans." I disagree...to an extent. I like a lot of Banksy's graffiti and sculpture projects and I genuinely admire the anti-commodification philosophy of "street art." But street art is a movement and aesthetic that, as the name suggests, relies heavily on context.

Banksy's public interventions are often clever and poignant, but pithy sayings that work well on alley walls can seem inappropriate and shallow in the gallery. A street artist's reputation, like his or her work, is a product for and of the public. As such, is it possible to pass over into the private realm? If Banksy plans to continue displaying work in the world of financiers and socialites, he must address that question responsibly. After all, the best works produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, the Art World's hallowed representatives of graffiti culture, are seen in photographs of New York City streets, not in auction house catalogs or museums. Collectors, academics and appraisers will balk, but the Basquiat/Haring gambit is plain enough; all of those over-priced paintings are but trumped-up vestiges of the few early works that mattered.

Indeed, the limited edition Banksy prints hanging in Vanina Holasek gallery are more disappointing than I expected (or feared). Hung chaotically - crooked and, in some cases, only partially unwrapped - the prints are tokens of Banksy's work but not, as I see it, the art itself.

What does this tell us about the artist? Perhaps not much; this exhibition is not officially sanctioned. For his 2006 "Barely Legal" installation in Los Angeles, Banksy sought the cooperation of business partners and their associates to assemble an exhibit suitable for the work and the audience. Now the darling of Hollywood celebrities and thousands of young, monied collectors, the artist has the wealth and the influence to take control of the entire enterprise so that his original, guerilla intentions remain true.

But context didn't much bother the group of British girls that shared Vanina Holasek gallery with me last week. They tromped up and down the gallery's three flights, dutifully documenting the exhibition in photographs. Indeed, the anonymous satirist from Bristol that so often pillories celebrity and consumerism is a hot commodity himself. It's time for him to accept as much...and then turn his populist canons on those that would feed him.

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"Out of the Box" at Elga Wimmer


Heide Hatry
"Expectations" (still)
2007
DVD, 2 min., 47 sec.

Elga Wimmer: A karma police fearing liberal, I entered Elga Wimmer gallery apprehensive. How would I respond to "Out of the Box," an all female group show concerned with gender and corporeality? Because I'm usually bored by thematically curated exhibitions - they make neat that which should remain untidy - and I'm sometimes guilty of playing the reactionary SWM, I worried that my response would be "inappropriate."

Video and nudity predominate in "Out of the Box," and both Heide Hatry's "Expectations" and Regina Jose Galindo's "Piel," the two strongest works, involve young, attractive women exposing themselves on film.

The video component of Hatry's "Expectations" installation is straightforward enough. Dressed provocatively, Hatry approaches the camera, pauses in center frame, feels the pangs of another presence, hikes her skirt and "births" a chicken egg. She then throws the egg at the camera lens. Through a film of embryonic mess, we watch as the artist adjusts her skirt and walks away, unfazed.

A heterosexual male with healthy, if sometimes deviant sexual appetites, I am vaguely aroused by Hatry's video. I assume she intended as much. Her outfit, complete with laptop on hip and secretarial glasses, is pulled from the fantasy rack of point-and-click porn cliche. Furthermore, the egg production is as much a reference to the pornographic objectification of women as it is to the menstrual cycle, birth or Hatry's artistic forebears (one of whom, Carolee Schneemann, is included in the exhibition). The oft discussed "male gaze" is encouraged - of all viewers, whatever their gender or sexuality - then shamed. We're left with egg on our face. I watched "Expectations" sheepishly. I felt as though Hatry had indirectly cast me in the role of dumb, male ape and I resented her for it.

Six years ago, I lived in a predominantly African-American and Hispanic neighborhood. One Sunday morning, as I carried my laundry down the block, a group of local teenagers approached, directing unpleasant epithets my way. The teen closest to me spat at my feet, stared me down and snarled, "Get outta our hood, mericon." I became enraged. I wanted to make it clear to the teenagers that I was not who they thought. But my reaction was irrational; by virtue of my skin color and my rent, I was exactly who they thought. I deserved their scorn, yet I remained frustrated and angry. Watching 'Expectations," I was similarly vexed and defensive. Why does Hatry feel it necessary to turn me into a sexist, possessive thug? Anyway, that's not me; what should I have to be embarrassed about? It isn't me that she intends to egg.

Yeah, right.


Regina Jose Galindo
"Piel" (still)
2005
DVD, 47 minutes

Galindo's more hopeful "Piel" absolved me of some male guilt. The artist is filmed as she publicly removes her clothing, methodically shaves off all of her hair (scalp, eyebrows, body), and then walks confidently down a busy Venetian side street and onto a canal bridge. Making the private public is by no means new, but it remains as liberating and exalting today as it was centuries ago. The artist's performance is a ritualistic reclamation of her body. But Galindo's shaving complicates matters. Her comfortable public nudity is progressive, but the shaving is dual; it speaks both to new beginnings and to regression, whether forced, as by a government or society, or resorted to under duress.

James Wagner, writing about the exhibition, wonders if heterosexual and bisexual men "get a head start in understanding gender." I can't confirm this notion. Personally, I left "Out of the Box" flummoxed. I very much liked the works by Hatry and Galindo, but my response to Hatry's keen, even aggressive criticism and Galindo's vaguely masochistic absolution is lugubrious.

Does this reaction suggest that even (self-proclaimed) progressive males are inherently sexist? Probably. As long as there are penises and vaginas, there will be finger pointing. Humans continue to prove that we are foolish animals; misunderstanding and biases are the result of any perceived difference. The important thing for us all to remember, regardless of race, sexual preference or religion (though this last one is more tricky), is to be happy in our flesh and to accept that the distinctions are trivial and the similarities profound. If we can accept that truism, trite though it is, it logically follows that candid reactions are more valuable than appropriate ones.


Heide Hatry
"Expectations" (still)
2007
DVD, 2 min., 47 sec.

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Adam Parker Smith at Priska Juschka


Adam Parker Smith
"Bold As Love" (installation view)
2007
Felt, wood, pins
Dimensions variable

Priska Juschka: The gallery press release describes "Bold as Love," Adam Parker Smith's collection of piked cartoon heads at Priska Juschka Fine Art, as "an illustrative tableau [exploring] consumerist addiction to violence." Packaged thus, the installation risks being a one-liner, but the project's exuberance and sincerity are beguiling. Smith's principal materials are felt and wood, a handicraft combination that counters the gory imagery (apparently inspired by Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls"); the effect is both comic and tragic.

The first of my two visits to "Bold as Love" was the afternoon before the opening. Packing material was strewn near the gallery door and a young man worked alone in the space, making final adjustments to the installation. I tentatively inspected several of the skewered heads, then asked the man if he was responsible for them. "Yes," he replied, enthusiastically. "The opening is tonight. You should come by." His manner and carriage struck me; I immediately liked him. Working in the Art World, I'm wary of mistaking charisma for quality, but Smith seemed genuine.

With that encounter in mind, the second, longer visit to the installation left me convinced that Smith's gesture, a product of the MTV generation, is intended to rouse us hipster shits from our reverie. "Bold as Love" reminds us that violence is not a cartoon and that love is not the stuff of pop songs.


Adam Parker Smith
"Bold As Love" (installation view detail)
2007
Felt, wood, pins
Dimensions variable

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Will Yackulic at Jeff Bailey


Will Yackulic
"Invocation 2nd"
2007
Gouache, watercolor, India ink and typewriter on paper
16 x 14 3/8 inches

Jeff Bailey: Through my early twenties, I equated the words "hermetic" and "hermitic." In fact, "hermetic" is a more technical term, meaning airtight or vacuum sealed, whereas "hermitic" describes a reclusive person. The two words are etymologically related, however, and both are applicable to Will Yackulic's works on paper, currently on view at Jeff Bailey gallery.

Admiring these images, depictions of St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators, librarians and encyclopedists, come to mind. (What a pertinent saint for the contemporary artist, too! So many of us are archivists, collagists and interpretors.) Yackulic's pictures would hang well above a writing desk or adorning the walls of an appreciated library or study.

Essentially abstract, the precise meaning of Yackulic's pictures is inaccessible, but the geodesic spheres, poetic fragments and typewriter key strikes evoke a furiously romantic temperament, hopeful, obsessive and likely withdrawn. Imponderable and poetic, the images might pass for artifacts of a forgotten alchemical metaphysics.

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"Observing the Edge" at Kentler International Drawing Space


Beverly Ress
"Wound Leaves"
2007
Pencil on paper, mounted on gessoed canvas, cut and wound, painted wood shelf
33 x 22 x 5 inches

Kentler International Drawing Space: The Kentler International Drawing Space, an ample, welcoming gallery located in Red Hook, was heretofore unknown to me. When I received an invitation to the opening of "Observing the Edge," a group show curated by Jennifer McGregor, I decided I should take the bus ride to south Brooklyn.

McGregor also serves as senior curator for Wave Hill, the Bronx public garden and cultural center dedicated to "[exploring] human connections to the natural world," and her artist selections lend Wave Hill's sensibility to the K.I.D.S.. "The exhibit [focuses] on artists who examine natural growth in the edges and interstices of the urban landscape through drawings and watercolors." Although I appreciate all of the work included, three artists - Kevin Duggan, Beverly Ress, and Amy Talluto - and one collaborating pair - Bob Braine and Leslie Reed - are of particular interest.


Amy Talluto
"Cadman Plaza Tree Portrait I"
2006
Pencil on paper
18 x 14 inches

Braine and Reed catalog the 59 species of urban flora they collect in an empty Bronx lot and assemble the account in "Bronx Lot Florilegium." While their project begins as a standard biological sample, the presentation harks back to an era in which natural history illustration awakened wonder in the minds of the masses. Amy Talluto's drawings and paintings usually depict rustic, woodland settings, but the two drawings included in "Observing the Edge" are exactly that, observations of the edge of Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza. Her remarkable mechanical pencil technique animates these pictures; the bark is rich and flesh-like, the branches dance and twist like neurons.

"Wound Leaves," one of two works by Beverly Ress, is termed a "sculptural drawing." A masterly colored pencil drawing of dying leaves on a branch is mounted on gessoed canvas, then partially cut and wound into a yarn-like ball that rests on a shelf below. The press release alludes to Ress' interest in "[conveying] the disjointed connection that we have to the natural world." The work hangs as a forgotten standard but the wound material, still connected to the drawing, reminds us that the union is permanent.


Kevin Duggan
"Turf I: Disturbed Land, 2006"
Graphite on paper
12 x 72 x 4 inches

For his "Turf" series, Kevin Duggan considers the "feral botany" of Albrecht Durer's well known watercolor and gouache work, "The Large Turf." Each of the nine plant species depicted by Durer is presented by Duggan in a suite of "accordion books." The species central to "Turf I: Disturbed Land," the strongest of the suite, is the common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). This weedy European and Asian native was brought to the New World by European settlers and, like the human colonizers, the dandelion spread vigorously westward. Some Native Americans even referred to the plant as "white man's footprint." Duggan's striking "books" pair anecdotal and informational text with his accomplished drawing and watercolor technique.

Such handsome marriages of art and natural history are rare in contemporary art galleries...and welcome. Let's hope that Wave Hill continues to be so generous with its sensibility.

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Photo credits: Image of Banksy print ripped from resale site; Heide Hatry stills, courtesy the artist; Regina Jose Galindo still ripped from Elga Wimmer website; Photographs of Adam Parker Smith's "Bold as Love," Hungry Hyaena; Will Yackulic image, courtesy Jeff Bailey Gallery; Beverly Ress, Amy Talluto and Kevin Duggan images, courtesy the artists

Marc Ecko's Admission

Anyone having watched the video of Ecko employees tagging Air Force One will be interested to learn that graffiti artist cum fashion mogul, Marc Ecko, admits the video was a hoax.

"I wanted to do something culturally significant, wanted to create a real pop-culture moment," said Marc Ecko of Marc Ecko Enterprises. "It's this completely irreverent, over-the-top thing that could really never happen: this five-dollar can of paint putting a pimple on this Goliath."

I suspected as much, but enjoyed the documentation and dissemination all the same.