exhibit reviews:
Anja Lichau & Jessica Pezalla, Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Eri Itoi, Analogue Books
Edinburgh, UK
by Rea Cris
Childs Prey, White Walls Gallery
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Brian Eno, BALTIC
Newcastle, UK
by Rea Cris
Orly Cogan & Nicholas Knight, Steven Wolf Fine Arts
San Francisco, CA
by Tonya Warner
Childs Prey
Works by Caleb Neelon & Ben Woodward
White Walls Gallery
San Francisco, CA
7 April - 2 May 2007
by Tonya Warner
The pairing of these two East Coast artists, Caleb Neelon and Ben Woodward, makes immediate sense - they both create somewhat enigmatic, brightly coloured paintings that allude to a visual vocabulary used in children's' books. Both also share a strong sense of community - Neelon hosts educational workshops and Woodward is a founding member of the artist collective Space 1026 in Philadelphia. In this show, they have also both painted directly on the walls, alluding to a background and fan base grounded in graffiti/street art.
Neelon seems to be more well known as a muralist (including working with kids to create murals) and as a writer - most notably for his contributions to "Graffiti Brasil." He also writes for magazines such as Juxtapoz and Swindle, as well as contributing essays to catalogues. With so much on his plate (did I mention that he also has a couple of pages of Hamburger Eyes-esque photographs on his website), his studio paintings seem to suffer. This series of new paintings feature really washy backgrounds (like hippies have tried to do "creative" paint job in your kitchen), inhabited mostly by towers and broken-down boats with legs. There are a lot of gridded patterns - bricks, planks, etc., occasionally with phrases incorporated and repeated throughout their surface - such as "people like to lie." Overall, there appears a sense of cynicism, despite a colour scheme and design elements that would go very well with an Ikea-designed child's bedroom. There seem to be allusions to Noah's Ark, the tower of Babel, and perhaps the idea of the wayward traveler, however, any real message seems to be lost. It's like looking at an illustrated book without the text and knowing that although you could make up a story to go along with it, you really have no way of knowing what's supposed to be going on.
Then we come to Ben Woodward's work which, though similar in its allusion to children's book illustration and finely detailed accents, actually provides a framework for interpretation. Woodward creates anthropomorphic creatures in simplified settings that become scenes reduced to symbolic gestures. He thus deals with complex emotional experiences or "punny" social statements through a visual vocabulary usually geared for a much younger audience. Although some of his pieces come across as one-liners, due to sometimes juvenile titles, there is something endearing about the awkwardly uncomfortable creatures that makes you linger. Woodward's paintings are like comical visual representations of the concerns of a generation of 20-30 year old that still allude back to childhood, proving there are some things we never grow out of.
http://www.whitewallssf.com/pages/childs_prey_pg.html
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