Berlin-based Contemporary Fine Arts gallery is currently exhibiting the work of Art:21 Season 2 artist Raymond Pettibon. No Title, 2008 includes a large wall drawing in addition to video and works on paper composed with ink, colored pencil, and watercolor.
Pettibon’s comic strip narratives address a wide variety of topics in both art and socio-politics, ranging from sexuality to film, sports, and U.S. foreign policy. His incisive critiques are rooted in the 1970s punk scene from which his art emerged, having produced numerous album covers for the label SST Records. Pettibon’s brother, Greg Ginn, was a founding member of the seminal band Black Flag.
The artist’s usage of textdoes not take an explanatory role, but rather deliberately confuses in its ambiguous and ironic mode of storytelling. Often incorporating humor, they represent Pettibon’s personal viewpoints that he has written himself or borrowed from the likes of Flaubert, Proust, and Faulkner. Other figures that frequently appear in his work are surfers, baseball players, Gumby, Superman, and Charles Manson.
Raymond Pettibon’s sixth solo exhibition at Contemporary Fine Arts runs through April 26. For further information, please visit the gallery website.
Two shows featuring Art:21 artists open simultaneously on March 30 at the Riverside Art Museum in California.
The Big Sad, a two-person show by Barry Mcgee (Season 1) and Clare Rojas, examines the way these two artists draw upon street culture and utilize found objects and urban scraps. Both Mcgee and Rojas have bodies of work that mix a variety of styles and traditions, from folk art to graffiti writing, and combine both the craft of handmade painting and contemporary ideas about installation.
Thank You for Staying is a show of drawings by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) during a performance at the Riverside Art Museum earlier in the year. During the performance, Pettibon made drawings which legendary Minuteman bassist Mike Watt played music. The drawings contain references to Watt’s career, his lyrics, and the way he played that night, also well as a variety of other sources.
Both shows will be up until May 17, and you can find more information about the them here.
Those in the Washington D.C. area should take a moment to check out The American Evolution, an expansive show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on view through July 27. Works by three Art21 artists: Kara Walker, Martin Puryear (both Season 2), and Kerry James Marshall (Season 1) have all have been included in the Corcoran’s reexamination of the history of American art. The exhibition focuses on the evolution of five frequent themes in American art: money, land, politics, cultural exchange, and the modern world. The Corcoran has dug into their large collection of American artwork to illustrate how the definition of these concepts has shifted throughout the history of our country. Other artists in this show include Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, and Gilbert Stuart.
You can find more information about this show and a full list of the artists involved here.