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EAST MEETS
WEST: "FOLK" AND FANTASY FROM THE COASTS
at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
May, 2001
essay by Guest Curator Alex Baker |
| This exhibition showcases six young artists from
Philadelphia (Joy Feasley, Jim Houser, and Clare Rojas) and San
Francisco (Chris Johanson, Scott Hewicker, and Margaret Kilgallen)
who work in a folk and fantasy aesthetic. Their work is influenced
by or resonates with folk art and is created outside the confines
of art schools, galleries, and museums. However, "East Meets
West" is not an exhibition of contemporary folk art thus "folk"
is set off in quotation marks in the title. It features artists
who have cultivated highly personalized styles and a handmade aesthetic
that stands in relief to certain trends in contemporary art. Video
installation, digital art, prefabricated artwork incorporating high-tech
materials, neoconceptualism and neominimalism, and academic theory
are refreshingly absent. The vocabulary of the "East Meets
West" artists is informed by a range of artistic influences
including contemporary Indian and 19th-century American sign painting,
1960s psychedelia, science book illustration, kitsch, children's
art, comics, and thrift store painting. Work includes painting and
drawing (both on traditional surfaces and on ICA's walls), as well
as installation and sculpture. |
Joy Feasley (Philadelphia) makes
mixed-media paintings that integrate landscape, abstraction, pattern
and decoration, and figurative imagery. Resin mixed with flocking,
day-glow tempera paint, and etching and screen printing techniques
create rich depths of field. Feasely often begins with a landscape
painting, which appears to be a found work, a quirky painting bought
at a flea market or discovered at curbside, but that is actually
created by her own hand. She then draws, paints, etches, or prints
disparate elements (a nude woman, skulls, constellations, stars)
on the surface of the painting forming hybrid compositions. The
work is autobiographical and is informed by her travels to places
such as Nepal, India, Florida, and New England; memories of youth;
relationships; and her various emotional states.
Feasley (b. 1966) is
a member of Vox Populi, a co-operative gallery in Philadelphia,
where she has shown on numerous occasions. She has also exhibited
at Blohard Gallery, ICA, and Fleisher Art Memorial, all in Philadelphia. |
Jim Houser (Philadelphia)
is a self-taught artist who brings together poetic observations,
anthropomorphic creatures, and an array of images in flatly rendered,
cartoon-like paintings that recall the work of folk artist Howard
Finster. Houser is an exceptionally prolific painter and drawer
and will include approximately one-hundred paintings and mixed-media
compositions on found canvas, wood panels, old windows, and discarded
skateboard decks for his installation at ICA, his largest thus far.
Houser will push his creative energy in uncharted directions as
he brings together new and existing work while animating the gallery
walls by painting and drawing directly on them. Houser's artistic
endeavors developed out of obsessive story writing and cartoon illustration
jotted down in sketchbooks. It has only been in the last four years
that he has made the transition and transformed his art from the
private world of the sketchbook to creating paintings and installations
in galleries.
Houser (b.
1973), has shown at Space 1026, Vox
Populi, and Spector Gallery (Philadelphia); CBGB's 313 Gallery (New
York); Plush Gallery (Dallas); and Space 237 (Toledo), among others.
Like Chris Johanson and Margaret Kilgallen, Houser has designed
skateboard graphics for prominent companies in the skateboard industry. |
Clare Rojas (Philadelphia)
is an artist of multiple talents who paints, draws, and makes animated
films, as well as music. Her gouache paintings on panel (approximately
30 will be shown at ICA) are beautifully idiosyncratic fantasy worlds
straight from the artist's subconscious with no art historical stops
along the way, save for a collision of teenage notebook art with
a kitsch Surrealism. At first glance,Rojasā paintings seem saccharine,
but closer examination reveals the kind of darkness found in fairy
tales. Little girls and androgynous characters share space with
snakes, sloths, birds, and grimacing monsters. The color and texture
of her paintings resemble silk-screen prints. This is the result
of Rojas's training in and enthusiasm for printmaking, which she
deftly explored during her tenure at Space 1026.
Rojas (b. 1976) has
exhibited at the Painted Bride Art Center, Space 1026, Vox Populi,
and ICA (Philadelphia); and the Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington),
among other venues. Her animated short film, The Manipulators, a
collaboration with Andrew Jeffery Wright, has been screened at numerous
film festivals, where it has received many awards. |
Chris Johanson (San Francisco)
creates art from discarded materials. An
astute observer of the contemporary human condition, Johanson makes
the"vibes" we emanate "both good and bad" visible.
Interested in depicting the abject as well the possibility of redemption,
his characters populate the installations. They bend with the weight
of the world, swear, fight, and drink. Others find peace in communes,
hippie festivals, and twelve-step programs. Johanson's aesthetic
is nave, almost childlike, but filtered through a sophisticated
and genuine concern for his fellow citizens, who are all on "different
trips," as Johanson explains. At ICA, Johanson will create
an installation featuring two islands, one urban, the other natural,
simultaneously isolated and linked. The urban island is populated
by the masses: crowded, ever-moving, oppressed, angry, and anesthetized.
A highway, with fast-moving cars, and a river, featuring more leisurely
rowboats, circle the urban distopia. The natural island is home
to a few hippies, homeless people, and liberal-minded college kids,
the latter a kind of hippie wannabe. Rainbows serve as metaphorical
bridges between the worlds. Also on view will be drawings and paintings
on paper, canvas, and directly on walls.
Johanson
(b. 1968) has shown at many galleries
and museums including Artists Space, Alleged Gallery, the Drawing
Center, and RARE Art Properties (New York); Four Walls, Kiki, Jack
Hanley Gallery, De Young Museum, and Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts (San Francisco); Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery and Vedanta
Gallery (Chicago); and Art and Street (Tokyo). |
Scott Hewicker (San Francisco),
like Chris Johanson, has an interest in hippy
culture, but Hewicker is more keen on exploring psychedelic imagery,
rather than socio-therapeutic implications . Hewicker weds painterly
abstraction, science book illustration, psychedelia, and childrenās
art into hybrid compositions embracing "bad"painting while
twisting it in personal and sometimes sinister ways. Hewicker paints
landscapes and nature scenes that verge on the artificial and fantastic.
Mountains sprout fungal forms, mountains float suspended like clouds
in the air, and the black silhouettes of butterflies seem gargantuan
as they flutter close to treetops. Scale, perspective, and color
hang in acid-trip limbo, the reoccurring mushrooms an obvious reference
to the magic variety. Hewicker often juxtaposes vibrant color with
the silhouette, the latter will serve as an essential backdrop for
his installation at ICA. Hewicker will paint a large, ominous landscape
directly on the gallery wall and then hang his paintings on this
foreboding surface.
Hewicker (b. 1970) has
shown at the University Art Museum (Berkeley); Jack Hanley Gallery,
Four Walls, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco);
and New Image Arts (Los Angeles.) |
Maragaret Kilgallen (San Francisco)
creates bold graphic art, which ranges in
scale from clusters of small, painted wooden panels to billboard-size
murals. American and non-Western folk traditions and art making
styles inform her practice. Her art is very "American,"
paying homage to such topics as hobo freight train riders of the
Depression and the contemporary Mexican-American commercial strip
that one might find in San FrancisoÕs Mission District, but also
suggests the out-of-time, commercial art found in India and Africa,
where old, imported graphic conventions continue to predominate.
Surfers, itinerant laborers, and musicians (the majority who are
women) share space with place names and argots rendered in antiquated
typefaces. Kilgallen combines paintings and drawings as raw material
for grand mural installations, but eschews preconceived planning,
for the most part, preferring to create spontaneously on site. Aside
from her gallery-based work, Kilgallen paints outdoor murals, both
sanctioned and illegal. Kilgallen will create a site-specific wall
mural in ICA's thirty-foot-tall first floor gallery.
Kilgallen (b. 1967) has
shown at Deitch Projects and the Drawing Center (New York); Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts and the Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco);
the Forum for Contemporary Art (St. Louis); ICA (Boston); UCLA Hammer
Museum and Los Angeles County Museum (Los Angeles); and Art and
Street and Alleged Gallery (Tokyo), among others. ) |
Alex Baker was Guest Curator
for the ICA exhibition "East Meets West" |
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