By DAVID SPIHER
Bush continues to inspire farcical works, aimed to sting
Just in time for Election Day, an entire entrance wall at Jon Tomlinson Industries is devoted to an involved letter by Brad Fisher asking God for help in overcoming the evils of Republicanism, and specifically getting George W. Bush voted out of office.
The show divides almost evenly among full-figured images of “trailer trash,” political commentary and big-head portraits. A couple of handsome charcoal drawings, “My Right Foot is Cute” and “New White Suit,” establish this L.A. transplant’s art credentials with strongly stylized figures, a sense of humor and just a hint of R.B. Kitaj’s narrative sensibility.
The John Waters’-flavored imagery includes “Mom’s New Boobs” featuring a bottle totin’ Courtney Love look-alike as Mom, naked to the waist, shows off her new purchase to her pantie-clad trucker boyfriend. Large in the foreground is her longhaired, ass- mooning son and the three-legged grinning dog that plays a major role in several of the more political paintings. All big grins and sly eyes, “Girl on Girl,” features two party girls, on a vibrant green background. The pair, a blond and brunette in respective pink and white tutus, two-step across the speckled brown ground that acts as the theatrical tabula rasa for most of Fisher’s compositions.
Among the big-head portraits, where some of the best painting occurs, are paintings of pets “Good Boy” and “Go-Go Kitty” with wonderfully wrong black line drawings of girl-cats in transparent skirts, rabbi dogs and buck-naked masters. “Sweet Pea Coat” focuses on objects-of-desire coats and blue-faced sailor boys. “Sweet Hard Kiss” presents a woman whose smeared mouth is a mystery. Has she just eaten a drippy piece of fruit or tasted blood? Some of the best paint-handling in the exhibition occurs in this group of works.
The gnarly Beckett-like characters of “Average American Family” fall neatly into a political narrative that tells you Fisher’s heart is in the “right” place, and it isn’t in the Bushies’ campground. In “Sweet” a silver sky with the word, repeated in fat brushstrokes acts as the hyperactive ground for a smeared, Bacon-like image of W at the national podium with that cute, malevolently grinning dog hiking his leg on George’s trosers leg.
This show closes Saturday, so take some time out to support one of the newest faces on the scene, in one of the newest “family-owned” galleries.
