Feature Articles


May Issue 2002

Eyespy in Charleston, SC, Presents Two Visual Art Exhibitions For May

Eyespy, an art and performance space in Charleston, SC, will be exhibiting the work of Brooklyn-based artist Marty Ackley from May 3-30, 2002. Eight new, large-scale drawings on paper will be presented in the exhibit titled Books I Haven't Read. Kevin Taylor and Ryan Lincicome will present paintings and multi-media work in Identity Crisis which runs from May 31 - July 2, 2002.

Ackley has had solo exhibits in Albuquerque, NM, Portland, OR, and Cleveland, OH, and has been part of numerous group exhibitions all over the country. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, with a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ackley creates cartoon-inspired characters which explore our culture's consumerist, throw-away nature. Other themes which are found within the artist's work are cynical notions of conversation and polite chatter. Self-aware and knowingly naive, the subjects of childhood escapism give a rare, fresh look at more serious matters of our American culture. Ackley says, "The cartoonish icon may not be your typical image of beauty or representation of desire and it often doesn't function as high art, and that is the challenge I am after."

Ackley offers the following artist's statement: "When I was a kid the Saturday morning cartoons were like a religious ritual to me. Without fail, I would spend endless hours watching a cast of colorful characters beat the shit out of each other. This battleground of violent cuteness kept me amused and puzzled until the last one of them would die off - or reality kicked in when the faces of real people started to enter into my retreat (usually in some form of sports show which would quickly result in the TV being turned off). I don't particularly remember feeling terrified or threatened by the aggressive behavior of the cartoons. Sure, I was aware that it was violent before I could grasp the full concept of the word, but I was also aware it wasn't real, and it made me laugh. In my innocence I could tell the difference between actuality and representation. It was a few hours of absurdity - there was quick, snappy music, color, goofiness, relentless abuse of doughy-eyed puffy things that were, more than often, cute and exaggerations of some likeness to reality. It was the death of little puppies in cartoon rainbows that made the perfect prescription for this laughter and escape. Cartoons were, and still are, so well-crafted that they act as the spectacle of their anxieties and fears. I preferred to see things a little more twisted, fucked-up and absurd. I found more humor and mystery in that unreal world of color and drawn lines. This hand-drawn facsimile of a world appealed to me in a way that real images never did and never have. They proved the simplest of things could be effective, remain elusive and provide many different meanings to me."

"Now skip 20+ some years- not much has changed. I still watch cartoons - maybe not nearly as often - but more than ever I am aware of my sweet-tooth for animation, and chubby, clunky, heavy drawing. The day I finally realized how important Guston was to my work I knew I could not escape the cartoon's influence. It was part of my life, part of my thinking, philosophy and, more so, part of my hand. It is how I draw. I remember almost immediately feeling the need to see displaced figures in or on paintings like some form of graffiti on modern art. It seemed my solution to wanting something that didn't quite make sense was to throw something in that didn't belong, and didn't belong in the academic standard of art schools or "high art" expectations, which were always overwhelming in "Art School" and the High Art of Renaissance mastery was important and your ability to do so was held as high. It didn't seem to matter all that much what that little gray mass in your head was thinking as long as it was based in some type of formal structure and held true to some pretty dusty conventions of modernism."

"As I think about the cartoon's influence in my work I want it to arise from experience, and the simplest of situations, frantic history, and "my reality" and "not to be artistic or self-expressive". Cartoons have gone through mass culture as generic emblems of a time when things were produced, consumed and abandoned at a frantic speed in a materialistic environment. For me, the characters become obscured identities from a grave yard of discarded desires and emotions of defunct styles from my past and present. Naive and often misinterpreted, as I often do the world, I feel these foolish little characters offer an effective contemporary functionality, critically and in content and reference. The characters ("simpletons"), out-moded, derivative and vaguely abject, present situations where the content is derived from the object's reference - not from the object itself The cartoonish icon may not be your typical image of beauty or representation of desire, and it often doesn't function as "high art", and that is the challenge I'm after."

Kevin Taylor is a painter and musician from Charleston, SC, and Ryan Lincicome lives in Atlanta, GA. Both artists graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design and exhibited together last November in Atlanta at Ballroom Studios.

Lincicome has exhibited in Atlanta numerous times and says for this exhibit his work is an "interpretation of personal secrets through disassociated images examining social and individual identity."

Taylor has exhibited all over Charleston: in coffee-houses, clothing stores, private apartments, and group exhibits at Print Studio South, SeaHag Studio and eyespy, as well as solo exhibits at Print Studio South and New Life Gallery (which has since closed). He did a 50 foot charcoal drawing on the wall at eyespy for its opening exhibition. Taylor won the Charleston City Paper's reader's choice "Best Artist" award in 2001.

Taylor's work contains a figurative narrative with angels, demons and cats populating many of his canvases. For this exhibit, exploring themes of identity crisis has lead to a somewhat radical evolution in the artist's work. Stark black backgrounds with solitary figures in masks, drawn from video images, examine ideas of self-identity and how we are perceived by others.

The theme of "identity crisis" has had Charleston visual artist Kevin Taylor thinking not about his self-identity, but the perceptions others foist upon you. "You don't have to be insane to have different identities," Taylor explains. "There are different levels of identity which people create." For the upcoming exhibit at eyespy art and performance space, the artist has been working on a series of paintings which are self-portraits of himself wearing masks painted from digital video stills. These large paintings on wood have a black background with a solitary figure, a departure from much of Taylor's work which often contains multiple figures and colors.

People are quick to judge, quick to be spoon-fed what others and the media tell us to think, and, as Taylor says, "let other sources do their thinking". Instead of picking one cause to fight for, or sitting around discussing what to change in the world, Taylor would rather take a broader, more active approach with his art and "make something that causes people to be subconsciously restless with the world and inspire them to think about how they can make unjust things just".

A stylistic identity crisis is also addressed in Taylor's work. Being fond of pure expression, Taylor's work ranges from humorous to poetic and painfully sincere. Taylor is also a musician, and feels some unstated art-world pressure to pick one art form and one style. This exhibit has given him "permission to be schizophrenic" he explains. "Art, to me, is being in 10th grade and doodling while the teacher is talking... about math." Never one to take himself or anything else too seriously, Taylor believes that "it's a crime when you leave the child-like state of mind behind - especially in art."

For more information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings or call the gallery at 843/276-1609 or at (www.eyespyart.net).

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