Sunday in the Park with Bosch



Kenton Brett, "Sunday Picnic," Ink, charcoal, digital print, and paper

 

Kenton Brett and David Jarred co-curated the show currently up at Thunder-Sky, Inc., titled "(F)art Show," which is up a couple more weeks.  It's a group gig filled with wonderful and hilarious moments.  The two of them (under the guise of Golden Brown) truly have done a magnificent job installing all of the works, so I wanted to spend some time with some of the pieces I admire. 

 

First off, it's one by Mr. Brett himself, titled "Sunday Picnic."  Essentially a diorama made from cut-out drawings, "Sunday Picnic" has a presence both on the wall and in your head of blanched Saturday morning cartoons slowly transforming into a Bosch bash that is both frightening and terribly funny.  The meticulous care it took to make this paper wonderland is breathtaking.  Each fragment has a skillfully accomplished edge, and the whole enterprise is just plain flawless.  The assembled, lacy atmosphere makes me think of both Henry Darger's warrior princesses and Kara Walker's supercharged silhouettes.  The simplicity of the landscape gets overcrowded with a sort of leisurely mania.  A coloring book has exploded and definitely does not want anyone to color in its lines.  Also Kenton seems to be referencing storybook illustrations from the 19th Century (like those Sir John Tenniel did for Alice in Wonderland) while undermining the whimsy with fart clouds and a deadpan depiction of Victoriana: a stiff upper-lip uncurls into a Monty Python snarl. 

 

That really is what the show centers on:  a joke that inverts itself and becomes so polished and pristine you have to take it seriously just because it makes no sense and is so skillfully executed.   The senselessness is the point, but also the counterpoint.  Kenton's constellation of drawings inhabiting a black box has a sort of puppet-show innocence to it, but also a Vaudevillian meanness, a propensity for anarchy.  You want to laugh even when you feel a little uncomfortable with its manners turning to shit. 

 

I'll be writing about some more of the pieces through the closing of the show.  Stay tuned...

How Dare You!

Jared Dreyer did this.

W. C. Fields once said, "There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation."

On the events page this week for "The (F)art Show," our new art exhibit curated by Golden Brown and opening tonight at Thunder-Sky, Inc., someone commented on another person's acceptance of the invitation to the show with complete and total outrage.  The thread has been taken down, but still it remains in my head, something along the lines of, "How can you go to this show?  It sickens me!  This is what is wrong with the art world today!  Instead of learning the craft, just doing these kinds of stunts.  It really is despicable."

Again I'm paraphrasing. 

But I think what the dude wrote was even worse, stilted and outraged and hilarious, concerning an art show that considers farting, instead of, I guess, the human form.  Or why women are mistreated in the workplace.  Or fame. Or any number of prosaic and lovely themes used for group shows all across the art-world universe.  (And what the hell is the "art world"?  Where is it?  Point it out to me on a map when you get a chance.)

What I'm getting at is that any subject an art exhibit tackles is completely arbitrary and doesn't necessarily mean anything.  The meaning comes from the work done, and how it's used in a show. Juxtaposed, installed, curated, the works in group shows spark off one another, and then you have a sort of compendium that addresses a subject without hopefully nailing it down, or even defining it at all.  "Farting" seemed like a really interesting and crude way to support this theory, and now that Kenton and David have installed, curated and juxtaposed the works they asked artists to make I feel pretty confident that you can make a really cool show out of anything, if you have the will, a sense of humor, and the balls to do it.

So back to the outraged dude on the Facebook events page.  Why did he feel the need to school the guy who had the unmitigated gall to accept the invitation to "(F)art"?  Beats me.  We're just small potatoes at Thunder-Sky, Inc.  Non-profit, not a lot of overhead, and absolutely no pretentiousness.  We scrape by and try to make shows that are funny, strange, thoughtful, and stubbornly what they are.  Because Raymond was all that and then some.  

Would Raymond like the show?  I bet he would.  Every toolbox we've archived is filled with joke-toys (like false-teeth with feet you wind up and they scuttle across the tabletop, etc.).  Plus he fashioned himself into a makeshift, slightly terrifying clown for Christ's sakes.  He had the unmitigated gall to go out in public in a clown costume and construction helmet, drawing buildings being torn down.  I'm sure that sickened a few people. 

Definitely not us.