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Friday, August 22, 2008
All tangled up
By Kim Russo
Imagine the ledger paintings of the Plains Indians, the comic book art of Art Speigelman, the notebook scribblings of a punk-rock teenaged boy, and the map you drew last week for a friend who was coming over for a beer — shake all that up in a Ziploc bag and toss it out onto an abstract expressionist painting (De Kooning's “Woman 1” would be perfect). This is the work of Brad Kahlhamer, whose drawings, paintings and sculptures are on view at James Kelly Contemporary through Oct. 11.
Kahlhamer was born to American Indian parents of unknown ancestry and adopted as an infant by Caucasian parents. He grew up in Arizona and Wisconsin. He received a bachelor's in fine arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He wrote and sang music, touring with various bands, until he was 26, after which he moved to and settled in New York. He worked for Topps Chewing Gum (remember the Garbage Pail Kids?), eventually becoming design director, a position that provided him access to the underground comic world. It was awhile before he had the confidence to exhibit his work, but once he did, he snagged the attention of Deitch Projects, where he had a successful solo show in 1999. A monograph of his work was published last year by Charta.
Kahlhamer exists in between two cultures: his genetic, Native ancestry and the white, middle-class world in which he was raised. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are about the space in-between those two cultures. Kahlhamer calls this the “the third place,” and he explores its landscape in art and music. A CD compilation of his songs is on sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, where his drawings and a new, 9 1/2-foot tall bronze totem pole are currently on view as well.
Packed with a gritty, sad, and funny turmoil that is energizing in minimalist-loving Santa Fe, Brad Kahlhamer's paintings rely on Native cultural references examined from the outside rather than the inside. So many of us only know our cultural history through off-hand stories or history books — or revised versions of recipes that incorporate processed food — rather than from first-hand experience in the homeland itself. Many of us can relate to what it's like to piece together a personal narrative. In Kahlhamer's work, the process of putting a lost narrative back together isn't easy — in its form or its message. But it is the story he is trying to tell.
Kahlhamer begins with thin washes of paint, reminiscent of abstract expressionist painting. Abstract expressionism is often described as the first truly American art, and in Kahlhamer's work, America is sorting itself out. On top of a landscape of spontaneous paint, Kahlhamer spreads out a series of disconnected cultural references and symbols, all painted with a loose, gestural hand: smiley faces, American Indians, sexy chicks in black underwear, eagles, bears, skeletons, skulls, buffalo. There are floating words as well: “spirit skin,” “Lupton,” “secret,” “slow,” “tooth.” Thin, tender, map-like lines connect eyes to mouths on skulls and smiley faces, creating a welcome path around and through everything. The addition sign (+) also dots the paintings, as if to suggest “this plus this plus this.” Everything is interdependant.
In “Somewhat Sideways,” the largest painting in the exhibition, the central image is a woman's head, and she is gasping (in horror? shock? ecstasy?). According to Kahlhamer, the paintings in the show at James Kelly are based on the life of one person, a model who was sitting for him until recently. In each of the paintings she is the central image, and she is never fully separate from the dozens of skulls and smiley faces that surround her, imagery that literally presses in on her from all sides.
Kahlhamer's compositions are based on Plains drawings. The lack of western perspective is one of the most convincing choices Kahlhamer makes in the work, simply because it eliminates a single hierarchical point-of-view, and this makes every part of his narrative equally important. Kahlhamer's mark-making, the history of which bleeds through layers of translucent oil paint, reveals and hides itself at the same time, just as his narrative does.
In addition to new paintings and one large drawing, the exhibition includes double-sided portraits on wood, and dolls made from found materials. Kahlhamer began making the dolls in 1982 after viewing figures in the Barry Goldwater Collection at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Totaling nearly 90 in all (a small portion of which are exhibited), the figures are a community Kahlhamer created for himself, organically, over time. The largest of these figures is the new 9 1/2-foot bronze totem pole at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. According to Kahlhamer, it is his ultimate figure.
The disorientation in Kahlhamer's work is an accurate representation of how complicated culture and history really are. Whether there is a convincing message in Kahlhamer's work — beyond the fact that history and culture are muddled places — remains unclear, but his uncensored rummaging is definitely worth a detour off the Plaza this weekend.
If you go