Andrew Schoultz @ and Gallery
Friday 03 January @ 10:44:54 |
 by John Tribbett
When Kate Meyers and Jesse Willenbring, the mother and son curator team of “and Gallery,” were envisioning the type of environment they hoped to create in their newly opened space, they consulted the dictionary. There they found artist defined as “a person who does anything very well, with feeling for form, effect, etc… painter, composer, musician, poet, muralist, actor, sculptor, designer, architect, printmaker, and art not defined.”
Installation by Andrew Schoultz
With this broad definition as a catalyst, they have set out to create a habitat which deliberately defies categorization, except that it will act as a creative hub to be transformed by those who are masters of their craft.
San Francisco-based artist Andrew Schoultz has christened the gallery with a sweeping and magnificent display of his trademark mural work. Employing his repertoire of iconic images, Schoultz has transformed the gallery into the vibrant movie set of a giant comic book gone mad with the claustrophobia of postmodern capitalistic society. For one week, Schoultz worked freehand 14 hours a day, until the gallery space metamorphosed into the physical embodiment of his desire to defy the chocking grid of conformity haunting our urban environment.
Comparisons to Escher, Doctor Seuss and contemporaries like Barry McGee are undeniable, but it is the legacy of political murals rendered by Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera or Siqueiros that offers fatherly lineal descent for Schoultz’s work. By filtering political commentary through the matrix of graffiti and cartoons, he has created a landscape which simultaneously collides with, and converts, the quiet desperation of the nine-to-five rut into an explosion of protest and beauty.
Here, borders and boundaries exist solely to be disobeyed. Flocks of citizen-ducks pour off of canvases and bleed onto the gallery walls, reminding us of our own teeming cities. Haphazardly constructed crates and struggling elephants play unsteady homage to the cities’ poor and the rare individuals who support the gray skyscrapers looming above them. Wrapping themselves in a DNA chain of preprogrammed social climbing, the masses struggle to reach the top, only to be spit back out through the caricatured smoke of fuming chimneys.
The impetus driving the placement of Schoultz’s creations, be it a construction site fence, a commissioned public space or a gallery wall, is a sincere desire to engage the world in the commentary he paints. “A lot of time the viewers tell me they are seeing all of this stuff I never thought of—that’s a really good thing” he says. Because of this, his favorite place to work is outdoors in the community. “The audience for a mural is more diverse. A lot of people get exposed to art that normally would not. People who hate art are forced to look at your work,” he says.
Fortunately, “and Gallery” has given us a chance to take in the same visceral social commentary that the denizens of San Francisco are treated to daily during their morning commute.
The Andrew Schoultz exhibit continues through January 19. and Gallery, 526 Selby Ave., St. Paul. 651-222-1346.
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