Downtown 1993 / 1999

 

Ices (La Esperanza)

1996, acrylic, charcoal, graphite, collaged New Yorker articles on wood, 44 1/2” x 22 1/2”

 

Plastic Egg Nirvana

1997, acrylic, target, colored pencil, oil pastel, oak leaves on wood, 45 1/8” x 25 1/2”

 

Blessing

1996, acrylic, collaged New Yorker text, oil pastel, acrylic on wood, 44” x 25 1/2”

 

Yo, Mommy!

1995, acrylic, collaged New Yorker text, charcoal on wood, 52 1/2” x 19 1/4”

 

Sofa

1995, acrylic, charcoal, corrugated aluminum, collaged New Yorker text, celluclay on wood, 36” x 48”

 

DUMBO when it was SLUMBO

1996, acrylic on wood, 68” x 48”

 

SKATE NYC

1996, acrylic on wood, 62” x 48”

 

Pied Piper

1996, charcoal and acrylic on wood, 68” x 48”

 

The Horsey Set

1999, oil on patched canvas, roughly 6’ x 7’ 2”

 

Hauf (mudflap)

1996, acrylic on mudflap


 

The Downtown series is a large body of work typified by a sort of series within a series, a body held together more by disparities than likenessess - a deliberate attempt at anti-branding.  What immediately comes to mind when you think of Rothko?, Pollock?, Warhol? Exactly.  Great artists that nonetheless created commodities and a branded identity that gallerists could then market convincingly.  I explore things incredibly deeply in periods it seems of 3-7 years, and then move on to other frontiers. This is a creative, not a marketing strategy.

The Downtown series is a hyper-focused version of creative exploration, as I set out literally to make one piece as different from the next as possible using entirely different voices and visual vocabularies.  Still, they tended to spill out in groups of three.  And somehow the overall body of work holds together, perhaps by it's sheer variety, or something about the flavor.

Here's a more involved blog post about the approach: The Plight Of The Unbranded Artist.

This work reflected the nocturnal Lower East Side NYC / DUMBO (when it was SLUMBO) lifestyle I was immersed in, a world of indie-bands, skateboarding, nootropics and petty crime.

Formally these pieces address my interests in different modes of depiction, from painterly and luminous, to flat & opaque, and from collaged and aggressively textured segments.

An intense body of work that reflected its day.