Exhibit Review: Public Works at Andrew Rafacz
Editor's Note: tonight the gallery is hosting "Speaker Night #2
Review by Corinna Kirsch
In The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman describes how the frustrations we have with the objects that surround us--from difficult to unbuckle safety belts to unzippable zippers--is often due to poor design. However, this problem has a simple remedy, one taken on by contemporary designers like the four shown in Public Works at the Andrew Rafacz Gallery. Part aesthetics and part engineering, the contemporary designer doesn't just sell you things--they make things that people want to use (iPhones), propel viewers towards social change (Shepherd Fairey), or provide visual delight (any of the designers in this exhibition).
Public Works, the first in a series of exhibitions and events that will show crossovers between art and commerce, features artists who have made careers out of design, but whose work can--and has--just as easily be shown on the door to a music venue or on the cover of a magazine as on gallery walls. Many of the works revel in the simplicity of color,
composition, and pattern. Walking into the gallery, I was overwhelmed with a simple feeling of glee, absobed in an adult gymboree of bright colors and playful approaches to collage. (DEMO), Sing by Justin Fines combines quirky colors, a plethora of shapes,--like triangles, circles, and hearts--and found imagery into a banjo-strumming musician with a smile so large it could crush its wearer. Andy Mueller's Joni Mitchell's Necklace requires a double-take to decipher what decade the work was made.
Collage, an oft-used technique in this show, facilitates combinations of old and new styles and in the 2000s, a decade where bands try to sound like Joy Division and Kanye West tries to look like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, this return to the past often results egregious abuses. Of course, the best instances of the mash-up, espoused in new music by bands like The Dirty Projectors, a band equal parts Jazz to Jam band and East to West, are more than just copies of the past, but tensely balance their sources, held together through collage.
A design exhibition without artists' commercially applied designs would be incomplete, belying the crucial tension inherent in any design exhibition. As such, the southern wall of the main gallery features a "super group" wall with a salon-style presentation of album covers, concert posters, and even an advertisement for a sporting event in Los Angeles. As the variety of works in this exhibition show, design can sell you things, but in line with Brown's description of good design, it has the ability to pull you in any which direction.
Andrew Rafacz is located at 835 W. Washington Blvd. For more information, visit
www.andrewrafacz.com
Review by Corinna Kirsch
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