Spam

Spam
Bill Burke
2007, Color Photograph

Part of his 2009 Destrukto series, this photograph was first shown at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller from May-June 2009. While much of the artist's earlier work is more explicitly political, the Destrukto series challenges it's audience to consider the larger lexicon of "American" iconography by shooting various symbols of 20th century Americana with a high powered rifle: lawn ornaments, budweiser cans, and even the famous Campbell's Tomato Soup can. While on the one hand, this is just a can of processed meat being pierced by a high powered projectile, does this action degrade Spam further than its placement in every convenience store across the country, or just as an assassin's bullet turns a man into a symbol does it dignify the product as something worth more than the price of ammunition? Burke's photograph offers no answers, only the bullet's path. The viewer may be reminded, however, that you are what you eat.

Cowboy

Untitled (Cowboy)
Richard Prince
1989, Still From Marlboro Commercial

Richard Prince's work has always been interested in appropriation. Whether creating paintings of bookcovers, taking stills from films, or taking old jokes and painting them on canvases, Prince attempts to point out the art where others would most likely ignore it. This Cowboy, an image of the American West, manliness and Marlboro Cigarettes is no exception. While Prince offers no judgement in his selection of this celluloid moment, calling attention only to the sand surging up under the horse's hooves and the apparent closeness of the clouds above the cowboy's head, the viewer cannot help but be reminded that every actor who portrayed the "Marlboro Man" died of lung cancer.

The Mousetrap

Untitled (The Mousetrap...)
Raymond Pettibon
1986, Pen and Ink on Paper

This piece is typical of Pettibon's work in both its minimalist black and white composition and its use of the interplay between image and text. Beginning his art career as the illustrator of several Black Flag album covers, as well as designing the group's logo, Pettibon's work was not seriously considered until the early 1990s. The words "The Mousetrap/ The Mice Are As Big As Rats/ To Build A Better Mousetrap," juxtaposed against the silhouetted city-scape suggests the dystopian status of modern urbanity. Though, as always with Pettibon's work, the exact meaning of the lines is left up to their reader, the mousetrap imagery seems to suggest the failure of the American dream and the all-consuming nature of consumerism.

Primrose

Primrose
Max Snow
2007, Black and White Photograph

An example of his Klu Klux Klan portrait series, this shot, first exhibited at Snow's 2008 solo show "It's Fun to do Bad Things"
presents its viewer with a strange juxtaposition. Fascinated by unusual subjects for his portraits, Snow's work ranges from candids of transexual hookers to stark portraits of heavily tattooed LA gang members. In Primrose, the masked klansman holds up a bouquet of wild flowers. His dark hood blends into the tones of the forest background and makes the white flowers stand out even more. The gesture is engaging but its intent is as mysterious as the klan member's face. Is it an offering to the artist and the camera, an attempt to show there is more to the man than the media would have one think, or is the significance found only in color. After all, it is a black and white photograph.

Nan and Brian in Bed

Nan and Brian in Bed
Nan Goldin
1983, Silver Dye Bleach Print

This photograph, which served as the cover of Goldin's 1986 book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which the artist describes as "the diary I let people read," conveys a plethora of possible scenes without a word. Goldin, who's body of work largely focuses on the drug addled subculture that permeated Manhattan's lower east side in the 1980s, gives her male companion a livid look, apparently annoyed at his post-coital behavior. He smokes a cigarette facing away from her, unaware of or simply ignoring her gaze. In the background a poster of another shirtless man with a cigarette suggests that "Brian" is emulating an older masculine ideal. This subtext can be applied further to suggest that that's all free will ever is. Rebellion is simply conforming to an older image of rebellion.

Beginning

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
-Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto 1, Lines 1-3





"Each of us chooses what sort of
a universe he shall appear to himself
to inhabit."
-William James, Principles of Psychology