Continuing through October 20, 2010
David Buckingham continues his playful assault on and homage to American mass culture with a dozen new wall pieces. The Los Angeles sculptor immortalizes the mediasphere\'s incessant din of ecstatic, insinuating and exhorting voices - ad catchphrases, movie quotations, and song lyrics and titles - in assemblages of scavenged metal that retain a hint of the gaudy colors of their commercial lives. They are now somewhat sun-bleached, and sport the rusty discolorations of their desert-junkyard retirements. Buckingham\'s cut and welded word assemblages thus juxtapose our brash capitalist self-image with the sober realities of dilapidation and obsolescence. It\'s wryly humorous art from a recessionary time - and exciting abstract painting, too.
While several pieces take the cutout shapes of icons and letters (\"TheCarnation Dollar Sign,\" \"Color Study (Star),\" \"Chevelle,\" \"Dan White\"), most of the works are rectangular word arrays. Pieces that quote rock music titles (\"God Save the Queen,\" from the Sex Pistols, \"Psycho Killer,\" from The Talking Heads, and \"Ziggy Played Guitar,\" from David Bowie) alternate with lengthier word salads, like \"Adult Books\" (\"Tailpipe, Daddy\'s Boy, Big Truckin\' Stud\"), \"Come On Baby\" (\"Come on baby, light my fire,\" from The Doors). Pedal to the metal, America!
Cain Schulte Contemporary Art
