Political correctness...

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 21, 2012 at 8:53am

Curator’s Comment:  

 

The title Political Correctness everywhere conceivably adds a biting edge to the already acerbic subject.  Nonetheless, it’s a very handsome drawing. The linear qualities fluctuate between restless expression and fluid representation through localized color and gestural mark-making.  I especially like the heavily inky passages that cause some of the fish heads to protrude into the foreground; their toothy open mouths seem to gape for air despite their suggested decapitation.  The scrawled writing in the background is illegible on my screen, but offers a delicate web of line work to offset the heavier figures.  I like the speckled pattern on some of the heads, creating repetitive design elements that further connect them to each other, and the small amount of open ground. I’m also drawn to Chinese Silent Night, though it also has grim insinuations.  The bluish purple tangle of dogs/pigs is ambiguous, but clearly they are lifeless as well as silent. Perhaps assembled as a food source, they become a disturbing conglomerate, or a sort of cruelly constructed netsuke. Both images suspend the animal subjects into a floating mass, so that the jumbled figurations blend together and ultimately read as strong shape and pattern. Both images also prove there’s great beauty in subjective ugliness.