For Immediate
Release
Robert
Townsend
Paintings
October 23 – December 4,
2010
Opening
reception:
Saturday, October
23
5-7
pm
Skidmore Contemporary Art is delighted to
present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles Poprealist
artist Robert Townsend. ;
Included in the exhibition are the first
works in his new series of paintings based on the most humble of car
culture artifacts –motel postcards.
At approximately ten times the size of the
source material, scale renders the vintage postcards more abstract and
more enigmatic. Intended as advertising, the images and text
instead
pose more questions than answers about the lodgings. Close
in Town
extols the comfort of the motel with bands of text that obscure the
iconic 1960s kidney-bean pool. The advertised comforts embody the
contradictions of 60s pop culture: ‘Hot Water Heat’ on one line
contradicts ‘Refrigerated’ on another. ‘Simmons Beauty Rest’
and
‘Free Color TV All Rooms’ provide a humorous glimpse of antiquated
notions of
luxury.
The image in Yucca Motel is based on a
vintage 40s postcard. It was annotated by the sender with the word
‘us’ and an arrow indicating the room occupied decades ago.
Seventy
years later the friendly message gains poignancy as one realizes that
the motel, the sender, and the recipient are likely all gone.
The
third postcard painting in the series depicts a cartoon cowboy who
advises us to ‘Have Fun in the Sun’ in Las Vegas. Below him
is a
hand-written message which reads ‘Just Married! 3-12-62.’
One can’t
help but wonder about the identities of the newlyweds, the recipient,
and the response elicited by the
message.
Cupcakes for Lia presents the viewer a
close up of cupcakes adorned with colorful frostings and candies.
Townsend takes subject matter almost synonymous with the art of Wayne
Thiebaud and subjects it to ironic scrutiny. His cupcakes are
depicted
completely without nostalgia, as if they were artifacts from another
culture. Tightly packed in a box for delivery, these are not
home-baked or even old-fashioned treats from a bakery. They are
high-ticket sweets from a fashionable cupcake boutique.
In his watercolors in the exhibition,
Townsend explores similar icons of popular culture with the same humor
and detachment. Sweet Confections depicts a
handful of Halloween
candy magnified to a scale where the candy wrapper labels reveal the
treats to be vehicles of advertising. In Ski Inn, the
signage offers
a humorous pun: a typographical error in ‘Ice cool drinks’ can be read
as ‘Ice cooled rinks.’ The most poignant watercolor in the
exhibition
offers a different mixed message in a row of children’s blocks arranged
to spell ‘z is for xanax.’
Townsend’s paintings take us on a nostalgia
journey into a colorful period of America’s recent past—only to reveal
it as so much like
today.
Skidmore Contemporary Art, located in
Bergamot Station is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 –
5.
info@skidmorecontemporaryart.com
www.skidmorecontemporaryart.com
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