Raymond Pettibon,
"New Work"
David Zwirner
525 W 19 Street, New York
212-727-2070
November 23- December 24, 2004
By ARASH
MOKHTAR
Raymond Pettibon No Title (Behind the big-top) 2004
gouache, ink on paper, 30-1/10 x 22-1/4 inches
Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York and Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Maybe it's my age.
Perhaps it's the intimacy of experience I've shared with an irreverent
aesthetic found largely in underground comics and zines, music and mayhem
as I grew up in America. In any case, it's overabundant in the work
of so many rising artists today. Most of it, whether found in the halls
of ivy league graduate studios, or galleries foaming with the waves
of incoming emerging artists, is schlock; imitations crashing on the
shores of imitation. Comics become a bore and a chore to digest when
they originate from an unimaginative place.
Raymond Pettibon's show of new work at David Zwirner in Chelsea this
month lays to waste all the copycats and wannabes. It's a big show with
perhaps too many drawings that support much of the artist's writing,
or musings. He scribbles on walls above and below his drawings like
a tired device meant to elicit a sense of freshness and directness to
his brash drawings, and yet it still works. Pettibon has left behind
the pen and picked up the brush with a sense of material bravado that
reflects his prolific nature, or compulsion, to do drawings. He has
not outgrown his roots but has cultivated instead a facility of expression
that begins to literally transform the viewer through a derangement
of our own knowledge. Is this literature? Poetry? Is it painting? Is
it political? It is an alliteration of all of these artistic gestures.
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Raymond Pettibon, from left to right, No Title (It's Like A) 1998, No Title (How Much They) 2004, No Title (The Sense I) 2004; click thumbs for larger images and details
Pettibon plumbs the extremes for imagery: the mundane, racism, evolution,
religion, violence, sports, pornography, nature, beauty and, with a
wink, Abu Ghraiib. He gives us carnivalesque baseball, mangy animals
that howl for the Second Coming, noir scenes ripped from the movies.
He peels back through all of this to what he finds to be bits of our
true natures, often chaotic and unforgiving. The video piece, a fusion
of drawn images and computer animation, is itself somewhat of a misanthropic
addition to the show. In it the question comes forth on a wave, "Was
he a cynic, an enthusiast, or merely and esthete of rough seas?" Pettibon is all of these but manages to stay clear of the role of the
artist as hero. Throughout all of his choices the constant echo of his
hand dipping into the ink comes forth steadily and with such a grace
that a suspension of disbelief is achieved. The medium has been transcended.
Unlike so many of today's artists that grapple for some street credibility,
Pettibon's work comes off as honest. The real danger in all this, however,
is whether or not it all becomes too routine, if all the campy play
turns into kitsch. If somehow, despite all of the crudity and force
of will being splayed out in one of America's most expensive cultural
proving grounds, Pettibon becomes a caricature of himself, and the work
along with him. But the ethics in that equation remain unclear. What
cuts through the grime is Pettibon's willingness to make work that dares
our notions of all we consume. It's a bit tough at times and bites.
Take your time, chew slowly, and enjoy the flavor.
