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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Main$tream @ ArTrujillo
Wednesday 26 November @ 13:28:20 |
 by Will Conley
MAIN$TREAM: An Atypical Look At Pop Culture Art is currently the most colorful and incendiary exhibit in the Twin Cities. Its 25 artists hail from all over the globe. The visual works boldly mirror some of the major obsessions of our mass society: race, corporate ubiquity, the subconscious, the apocalypse, rock music, sexuality, chemical warfare, the stock market, guns, everything. The styles range from classical realism to comics to abstraction to collage.
Exemplifying MAIN$TREAM’s take-no-prisoners spirit is visual satirist Rob McBroom, who regularly buries pop icons together in mixed media graveyards. (In the case of “Cadillac,” he literally ripped the logo off a car.) One piece has the blued likenesses of Hank Hill, Pac-Man Ghosts, a Coca-Cola bottle and other victims grafted onto a Walker Art Center poster of celebrated expressionist Franz Marc’s painting “The Large Blue Horses.” Title and punch line: “One Trick Ponies.”
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A Paintng by Ryan Kelly
The show’s edgiest work comes from Midwestern native Dana Mongoven, whose “Dolce Far Niete (Sweet Idleness)” is a comics-style distillation of gangsta rap stereotypes in our era of racism. Here a smiling white nymph holds the erect penises of two monstrous black devils. One is relighting a joint, the other is taking a swig from a liquor bottle. Graffiti covers the tree against which the three figures are contentedly leaning while a perched boom box emits a roasted pig on a platter. Mongoven’s post-apocalyptic portraits of modern day racism, violence, hatred, sexual perversion and dementia certainly are shocking here in the Grain Belt, but much less so in Paris, where such vital honesty is commonplace and where Mongoven lived for years.
Less abrasive, but equally potent, are Duane Wirth’s large, psychedelic canvases. Wielding an exacting palette of colored pencil and a strong sense of intuitive physics, Wirth presents a believable portrait of his own mind, pitting self against self against self in search of the perfect visual counterpart to subconscious activity. With titles like “Birth of an Eye” and “Grounded to Our Mothers, We Reach,” their interacting figures ooze apart and back together again—just as thoughts do.
The spacious basement gallery itself was created and energized by muralist Alejandro Trujillo and Artistic Director Sarah Stone along with a dedicated association of volunteer artists who collectively call themselves ArTrujillo. Check out MAIN$TREAM before it expires, and be sure to make the next ArTrujillo opening reception. Those cats throw a grand party.
MAIN$TREAM: An Atypical Look At Pop Culture Art continues through Dec. 14. Gallery is open everyday 5 - 8 p.m. though hours are subject to change daily; appointments strongly encouraged; donations greatly appreciated. ArTrujillo Multicultural Art Studios & Gallery, 315 E. Lake St., Suite #1, Mpls. 612-821-9076. http://www.artrujillo.com.
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