Thursday, April 10, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Art: Artists explore supermarket of seductive surfaces

By Gregory Crosby

It was no accident that the Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket" was running through my mind as I viewed the new two-artist show at the Dust gallery in the Arts Factory, "In the Middle" (on view through May 18). In very different ways, James Hough and Sean Slattery are testing their wares in the marketplace while drawing their inspiration and effects from the ebullience and attractiveness of the modern marketplace. Hough is cool, controlled and seductive; Slattery playful, gaudy and faintly trashy in a bubblegum manner. The end results are as compelling or repelling as a walk through any corner temple of consumerism.

Hough's elongated canvases take their cue from his earlier exploration of the design and packaging of books. His starting point was the graphic boldness, the sensual overload of text and color one feels while walking through a bookstore, where the spines of books each call out in their own way for attention. Hough's small bookshelves have evolved, dropping text altogether, into six- and seven-foot spines that are occasions for the interplay of color and shape. They leave the book spine itself behind, some bulging outward like a baroque cigar tube, others as sleek and strange as the wrapper to some foreign candy bar. Their titles echo the cadence of advertisement: "Tasteful Just Got Tastier," "Have a Cool One," "Easy on the Elbow Grease." In their way, they're products that have transcended being products while retaining the attractive air of packaging design that exerts its influence on consumer choices, however subtly.

But there's nothing subtle about Hough's works. They proclaim their allegiance to graphic design proudly, demanding the viewer's attention while all the while remaining just calm and dubious enough (what exactly is being sold here?) as to not break that spell of initial engagement with the eye. Artists have been mining contemporary advertising strategies and designs for decades now. Hough joins a rich tradition, and brings to it not irony or appropriation, but a coolly observed reveling in the possibility of pure design, unmoored to any agenda but visual pleasure. Hough's current work is indeed a product that one never wants to break the seal on.

Slattery approaches from another angle, making for an effective contrast with Hough. If Hough's spines are the high end of retail product design, Slattery's sketchy drawings and four-color palette are the rack of cheap toys and comics by the cash register. Slattery is out to have fun in a mix of drawings on paper, ink on vinyl and acrylic on wood that celebrate the doodle, most notably in his series of cartoon portraits of odd, vampiric animals, each giving a goofy and toothy grin as an aura of rainbow color emanates around them. "Pina," "Janey" and "Fred" could be characters from a comic or mascots for a candy company or both ("I've got it! Kids love vampires and dogs, so let's give them vampire dogs!"). They're playful, but they also seem offhand and a little slapdash. Either you dig vampire dogs or you don't; such is the fate of the doodle. Ultimately, they seem a little too ephemeral for their own good.

The one work by Slattery that is both playful and thoughtful is a large canvas called "Time." Here, Slattery's intent and effect is sharper: a cover of Time magazine, rendered in thick, shaky lines, occupies the upper righthand corner of a flattened yellow plane. The cover asks in handmade lettering beneath a shapeless blob of color "Can abstract art save America?" The painting is unexpectedly strong and focused after the doodling in the way it both mocks the anxious solemnity of Time and yet still seems to be asking a semi-serious question (Can abstract art save America? Only through one rich collector at a time, friends). It's the one painting in this engaging show that strikes the right note of ambiguity, suspended in the middle of the artists' riffs on the jostling supermarket of seductive surfaces where, we are assured, satisfaction is still guaranteed.