reviews:
willem [liberation] | flamingo
studio - heta uma | Shu-Kay
| T.O. Magazine
Toronto Life |NME, UK|
Paris - Zoom | Metal Hurlant | RED
INK PRESS| Macleans
| Canadian Art
This big tumble of cartoons,
prints, graffiti-style drawings videotapes, posters, Bad Paintings (i.e., stylishly
anti-Good Paintings) and so forth by about 60 artists from Canada, the United
States, Japan, France and
England is & plug for what's sometimes called "graphzine
art."
That's the hotrodding, mean-streets
design work you sometimes see nowadays printed on rock album covers, relayed
to the world in adult comic books, splashed on the sides of downtown warehouses
and sizzling on the pages of such periodicals as Casual Casual- a Toronto "graphzine"
edited by Peter Dako, who put this show together and provided some of the most
interesting things in it.
But is it art? of course it
is, when it's not being something else legitimate: commercial design,
advertising, promotion, magazine or calendar illustrations
, or whatever. Though this stuff usually is being something else, it's still
interesting, as an array of the definitive design style that's emerged to greet
(and sell things to) the alienated, rich kids of the 1980s.
The general tone of this
show is one of high-pitched hysteria: screaming colors, violent imagery, karate-chop
drawing, heavy-breathing sexuality, outbursts, rage. It's rock music, Peewee's
Playhouse and big blasÚ, with a dusting of some pretty vicious anti-humanism.
Some of the tantruming here may be sincere, but It largely seems like smart
posturing, a form of lifestyle advertising pitched to the smart North American
and Japanese teenagers being bored, bad kids before
becoming accountants.
Lest all graphzine art be swept into the same bag, as so much hot-licks consumer
consciousness,it's worth noting that in England, if not elsewhere, the violent
cartooning, and caricaturing evidently come out of a grim street-level reality
of chronic unemployment and urban decay. Hence, English
graphzine work is perhaps less advertising than a kind of urban folk art --
the drumbeats on one of the world's most depressing tom-tom networks.
A catalogue is due out later this month. After closing
in Toronto, the show will travel to Montreal, Paris
and Tokyo, changing somewhat as it goes.
