Zeitgeist Gallery
February 16th – March 15th, 2008
Gallery Hours: Fridays 5 - 8pm; Saturdays 12n - 5pm

Borrowing its title (perhaps) from a Gordon Parks directed 70s action film, “Three the Hard Way” brings together an unlikely but quite complementary trio, Dennis Jones, Tom Carey, and ChrisTopher Crowder. While their approaches are quite distinct, they share in bringing forth in their works a critical response to society, a perspective that cuts through surface layers and image, and portrays something rather, as Holden Caulfield would say, “cruddy.”

Each of the artists is also known for his signature approach to the figure and the characters that inhabit their respective compositions. For this outing, as he did in his Oakland University solo show, Jones forgoes his sad sack, lost boys, Charlie Brown-like characters and distills his approach to text in paint on canvas and objects. The words are aphorisms, fortunes on a tea bag, ironic, sardonic versions of Jack Handy, or to offer a more obscure reference, like Alan Moore’s “Weeping Gorilla Comix.” An example: the word “Oblivious” written in bright orange-yellow, glaring forth on an equally Ronald McDonald red background. Another, typed perpendicularly across a sheet of lined paper oriented horizontally, “Someday you might be crushed by a big rock.” The words are small and out of place, appropriate stand-ins for the human, in the face of a world that’s too big, where we can get squashed without anyone noticing. It’s not then simply the words, but Jones’s use of the medium accompanying his message that makes them complete and quite compelling. If we could miss the words, we can’t miss the images, and vice versa. One piece consists of children’s wooden blocks with letters painted on them, arranged in various ways, spelling out, “Never a care, never a worry.” Even without his iconic child-figure (who does turn up on a role of toilet paper on display, as if to suggest, “$#!+ on me”), Jones’s strong empathy for children comes through in the work, as it also does in “Good night sleep tight” – white transparent letters on a midnight blue painted light box. This fusion of text and imagery is proving to be fertile terrain for Jones, as the strong aesthetics and his sharp, pared down observations in text, carry the messages deep. We might imagine these as billboards or large-scale installations in much the same way as Martin Creed’s neon signage adorning MOCAD at the moment.

If Jones offers a lot of words, Carey’s images are silent, mute, a single figure inhabiting each composition. These are whimsically grotesque, oddballs with antenna for eyes, part 50s robot, part monster, part alien, part Spongebob Squarepants. They’re a cross too between the mechanical and the cellular, as is reinforced by the more organic, almost washed, patterns adorning the surfaces behind the clean inked figures. This vibrant, bright color is a lush field that comes alive, like dyed bacteria cultures under a microscope, and almost exists in a separate world than the figures – the compositions are teeming with life on multiple levels. They could be scary as they lumber and writhe across the compositions, but Carey infuses them with humor, and as with Jones’s they instead elicit our curiosity and our empathy, and end up being rather delightful.

Crowder shares much with Carey’s figurations, his are human, though often grotesque and composed of the mechanical. It’s a bit of Brueghel by way of MAD magazine’s Don Martin or R. Crumb. The hyper-detailed works highlight the compulsion of the artist, as a landscape of sex, mechanization, and medications are eviscerated in his imagery. It may be generated by feelings deeply personal, and to be sure there’s a therapeutic quality about them, but what comes out is such a display of intensity as to be entirely compelling even as they prompt us to turn our heads. Crowder’s large scale, ornately detailed expansive works are not on hand here, instead he offers some of his more narrative, almost comic book pages, and then a small body of perhaps fragments from “Dear John” letters written to the artist in his youth, illustrated with great intensity. And here is the one downside to the show, these illustrated letters are great, disturbing, humorous, works, but they are sandwiched together and slighted as a result. They’d be served better, spread out, and given their proper due without being cramped by the other works on this occasion. His stand-in, with pompadour, often engaging in crude intimate acts, offers a raw expression of emotion, very honest if disturbing. The images depict a closeness of the letter writer and the receiver, in stark contrast to the almost dismissive, casualness of what was written, no doubt prompting even a stronger graphical response. We’ve received and written such notes ourselves, and perhaps share in some measure of the same dark thoughts that Crowder brings to life.

It’s a great grouping, each artist offers a lot to see, to take in, to relate to. As dark as they go, they all bring forth a lot of humor at the same time – they can laugh in the midst of it all, balancing the works, and helping us all get through these same dark moments. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com