Screened In
Bay area artists challenge the gap between high and low art
By Megan Voeller
Brandon Dunlap doesn't want his work to be in Juxtapoz.
The question comes up as we're talking about where the 33-year-old wants to go with his art in the future, and it takes me by surprise because -- as Dunlap himself immediately notes -- just about everybody making work that resembles his regards the influential, San Francisco-based magazine as a gold standard. If an artist makes it inside the pages of the glossy monthly, he has forever been stamped with the imprimatur of cool.
Not that Dunlap has anything against Juxtapoz. Quite the contrary: He reads it regularly and respects his peers' craving to be featured in it. He's just not so sure about seeing his work sandwiched between sneaker ads and articles about graffiti and tattoo-inspired art. (Though if the magazine called tomorrow, his idealism would probably be seriously challenged.) While Dunlap has one foot in that world, he doesn't want an association to turn into a pigeonhole.
His hypothetical conflict -- and I'm putting the magnifying glass on a fairly casual remark -- underlines the complexity of a movement some have called lowbrow art or street culture, others pop or representational art. Dunlap's work fits the bill--he uses silkscreen printing and a combination of original photos and found images to create hybrid works with a gritty feel and doesn't discriminate between T-shirts and wood panels as artistic canvas -- but he also boasts some serious printmaking chops: an MFA and a three-year gig as a production assistant at USF's Graphicstudio. No wonder the label "street culture" chafes a bit.
His latest show, Abomination of Representation, featuring works created individually and in collaboration with Red Labor, the duo Dave Rau and Josh Bertrand, opens this weekend at RedLetter1. The exhibit's title started as a political joke aimed at the current lame-duck administration, Dunlap explains, but evolved into a comment on the artistic process. The works on view display a combination of printmaking techniques, digital and otherwise, as well as hand drawing and painting.
The collaboration at times reaches a fever pitch, with Dunlap and Red Labor (who work as commercial graphic artists by day) effectively obliterating each other's images with layers of their own. Both in terms of content and process, the act of representing as an image-maker, as well as being represented (or defined) as a certain sort of artist, is subject to challenge.
Perhaps a bit of urban flavor can't help but creep into Dunlap's art because of where he works. It's all grit and grunge at a run-down building on Lemon Street in downtown Tampa, where he finds the space he needs to print from large screens and the freedom to get messy. Late-night sightings of homeless people and a dude calmly smoking crack next to the parking lot have him planning a move to a new spot in Seminole Heights behind the former Covivant Gallery. Though the exhibition space closed last fall, replaced by a furniture store, the building remains ground zero for creative revolution. Among others, Jay Giroux, a similarly multitalented designer-artist, houses his studio there and, soon, a press for his screen-printed clothing company, Sauver.
Until its closure, Covivant offered the only Tampa space where "street art" and "fine arts" mingled in smart shows on a regular basis. (And in conversation, side-by-side, the works often revealed the patent absurdity of such a division.) Now Dunlap and others are left showing at venues like RedLetter1, a tattoo studio that doubles as an art gallery, and Neo Trash, a vintage-and-new Ybor clothing store that has been a huge supporter of local artists and designers. Even Urban Outfitters has gotten in the game of late. Don't get me wrong -- all are fantastic venues, but they have the unwitting side effect of typecasting the works of a whole group of artists, who comprise one of the most visible movements in the Bay area, as something other than high art.
In Dunlap's images, the uneasy experience of being hybrid shines through. He typically starts with photographs of friends and models, and turns them into screen prints, visually flattening the image. He adds new dimensions by piling on textures and sometimes text, building up layers of ink and varnish, or watercolor. Figures often end up as half-human, half-animal creatures of myth. One portrait pops a woman's surprised head on Cthulhu, the H. P. Lovecraft monster whose appearance signals that Armaggedon is nigh; another builds a Medusa on a friend's quiet, come-hither-if-you-dare gaze. In both, it's hard not to read a double portrait of the identity conflicts -- gendered, political, aesthetic and otherwise -- of our times and of the artist as an individual.
Chris Kelly, a display artist at Urban Outfitters in Centro Ybor who recently helped the chain store start a program showcasing window designs by local artists -- including Dunlap, whose window is up right now -- takes the identity question (street culture? lowbrow?) in stride.
"They're just labels, like anything else. People have to label things so that they have an understanding of them," he says.
Kelly deals with the issue in his career, too. Besides designing windows at Urban, he does graphic design and makes 2-D, screen-printed artwork. Unlike Dunlap, Kelly, 26, is largely self-taught. He says one of the best things about the local community of artists who work in the street art vein is how supportive and willing to teach and share many of its practitioners are. In that way, their work is accessible or lowbrow in the most positive sense of the word, Kelly points out.
On the same night as Dunlap's RedLetter1 opening, Neo Trash -- a short walk away -- showcases Pastels and Neons, a combination fashion show and art exhibit featuring work by Kelly and others. Giroux will launch Sauver's latest clothing and accessories and do live screen-printing on panels. It's also the next-to-last weekend to check out Robot Invasion at Blackout Creations (up through July 14), a combination graphic design and tattoo studio in St. Pete, where both Dunlap and Kelly have work in a (you guessed it) robot-themed show. And keep your eyes peeled for the next window at Urban Outfitters, which will feature Chris Parks and Scott Lukacs of Blackout Creations.
Call it whatever the hell you want. Just don't be surprised if the revolution turns out to be screen-printed.
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