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Thursday, August 4, 2022

Stephanie H. Shih at Harkawik

Like Silly Putty spread across the City, the katamari of art picks up its displays, content. Gathers the city, reroutes it back into the Museum as a cultural enrichment program.  

An appreciation for the sign painter, whose vernacular does what Painting cannot: communicate without pretense, anxiety. The sign painter functions, the artist does not. "They start to scratch at what we crave: not looking like art. Because art is mannered, stillborn, cliche." The long history of artists wanting to be anything but. 

They become totemic or omen-like, mystified, connote but do not mean, become hieroglyphs of a culture lost.

 

Sign painters: Mark Grotjhan at Karma, Lauren Halsey at David Kordansky Gallery