This past Saturday was the opening of Volandismo, Mark Dancey's new exhibit at Re:View Contemporary Gallery.
A great crowd came to appreciate the 14 paintings that compose the exhibit, from which 10 are new works never exhibited before.
At the Temporary Gallery, along with a couple of the new painting works, a few of Dancey's popular print works are also available for purchase.
Volandismo is at Re:View Contemporary until July 25.
Information compiled by Amina Horozic, Re:View Contemporary's contributor
Continuing our series of posts related to influences on the development of Mark Dancey's graphics style, we picked Underground Comix.
Underground Comix, usually self-published comic books, appeared in the United States in the late 1960s, with the largest community spawning in San Francisco. Some of the more notable names that have arisen from that generation include Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton and Vaugh Bode. The movement is widely considered to be among "the most influential art movements ever to originate in the United States."
Typically, the underground comix reflect concerns of the counterculture, stylistic experimentation, social commentary and ridicule of the establishment. Further differing from the mainstream comics industry, the underground comix were usually written, illustrated and edited by a single author instead of a team. This process thus resulted in fewer issues, which were usually highly collectable or were included in anthologies with other comix authors.
Perhaps the best-known underground comix is the Zap Comix by Robert Crumb. It featured a "roly-poly cartoon style" which was "applied to irreverent stories of the anxiety-plagued "Whiteman" and the dubious guru "Mr.Natural"; featuring surreal circumstances from talking eyeballs to a whistling vagina. The "torrent of taboos was employed to mock anything and anyone representative of the establishment.
Within the genre itself, there were two distinct approaches that targeted this similar anti-establishment philosophy. One approach of the movement, typical of authors such as Robert Williams and Rick Griffin, was very visually loaded and surreal, without a specific story line -- very experimental. The alternative, pursued by artists such as Gilbert Shelton and Robert Crumb, had a more traditionally narrative approach, more of a "well thought-out graphic literature."
While majority of the underground comix artists at the beginning of the movement were men, the 1970s women's liberation movement saw a rise in the medium by women artists -- using the outlet for feminist art and agenda. Cartoonist Trina Robbins, being among the more well known female artists of the genre, has edited numerous all-women comix anthologies, including It Ain't Me Babe in the 1970. Today, she is currently one of the foremost historians on the topic and has authored "pioneering books about women in comics and cartooning".
Unfortunately, by the mid 1970s, the movement started to collapse due to several factors. Major reason was an increase in many inferior imitators that over-saturated the market. This reason, combined with local ordinances which closed shops that sold drug paraphernalia, where majority of these comix were being sold, pretty much took the movement to its demise. However, the influence of the movement remained and still continues to trickle down into sub- and mainstream American culture through outlets such as The Simpsons and South Park, as well as "body art"and the "politically confrontational installation art".
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix
X-Tra Contemporary Art Quarterly: http://www.x-traonline.org/past_articles.php?articleID=164
Images:
1. Zap Comix. Robert Crumb.
2. American Splendor #1 (1976). Art by Robert Crumb. Written and published by Harvey Pekar.
Information compiled by Amina Horozic, Re:View Contemporary's contributor
Although Mark Dancey's upcoming exhibit at Re:View Contemporary, Volandismo, focuses on his painting work, Dancey has been largely known for his graphics work.
In last month's interview with Re:View's writer Krysta Stone, Mark Dancey mentioned Russian constructivism as one of the main influences in the development of his graphics style.
Constructivism was an avant-garde movement in the 20th-century art, design and architecture coined first by the artists in the 1920s Russia. Russian Constructivism "refers specifically to a group of artists who sought to move beyond the autonomous art object, extending the formal language of abstract art into practical design work." It arose from the Utopian atmosphere following the October Revolution of 1917, "which led artists to seek to create a new visual environment, embodying the social needs and values of the new Communist order."
Some of the founding members of the "Working Group of Constructivists" were such notable artists as Aleksei Gan, Aleksandr Rodchenko and the Stenberg brothers, among others. The core philosophy of the movement revolved around using technology and engineering to economize materials and form clarity of organization, without any superfluous or decorative elements. Thus, for example, they "increasingly renounced abstract painting in favor of working with industrial materials in space." The debate was "about creating things that had some purpose in society. By denying painting, it was their attempt to escape the idea of creating art as commodity", claims Margarita Tupitsyn, curator at Tate Modern. Moreover, their work was to be organized around three core principles of: "tectonics (politically and socially appropriate use of industrial materials with regard to a given purpose), construction (process of organizing the material) and faktura (the choice of material and its appropriate treatment)."
While the Constructivists contributed to all creative arenas, including theater production and architecture, their most innovative work was in the field of graphic design, such as that of El Lissitzky. They were often "photomontages, combining bold typography and abstract design with cut-out photographic elements." However, during the 1920s and 30s, the period of Stalin's five-year plans, "the Constructivists suffered from the increasingly centralized control of art in Russia that led to the cultural imposition of Socialist Realism." Thus, while initially the movement was inspired by the Utopian post-revolutionary visions, it ultimately fell victim to the political system that emerged from the Revolution.
Internationally, however, the movement gained ground and spread throughout Europe and the Americas. Over the decades that followed, it produced numerous artists and architects which drew inspiration from the Constructivists' art and philosophy, most notably Estuardo Maldonado and Oscar Niemeyer. Most recently the legacy continues with the "Deconstructivist architecture of Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas who take constructivism as a point of departure for works in the late 20th and early 21st-centuries; such as Hadid's sketches and drawings of abstract triangles and rectangles that evoke the aesthetic of constructivism."
Sources: http://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10955&displayall=1#skipToContent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/drawing-a-blank-russian-constructivist-makes-late-tate-debut-1516801.html
Images:
1. Agitpop Poster. Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russian, 1893-1930)
2. Chelovek s Kinoapparatom. Vladimir Stenberg (Russian, 1899-1982) and Georgii Stenberg (Russian, 1900-1933) 1929. Lithograph, 39 1/2 x 27 1/4" (100.5 x 69.2 cm). Arthur Drexler Fund and purchase
By Simone DeSousa, Re:View Contemporary Gallery Owner and Director
I've known painter and illustrator Mark Dancey for a few years and have always been inspired by his dedication towards his work, as well as by him as a person. Mark's creative talent is accompanied by a unique personality that combines a wealth of knowledge, an insightful view on life, and a truthful and kind heart.
Last year I invited Dancey to develop a solo show project for Re:View Contemporary.
Re:View is now excited to announce our upcoming exhibit, Volandismo, a collection of Mark’s newest works. The opening reception on June 13 is not to be missed!
About Volandismo
Joseph Campbell said that myths are public dreams, while dreams are private myths. Painter Mark Dancey is producing strangely hybrid works that combine personal narratives with traditional myths. For his current series of round oil paintings of acrobatic nudes he studied the great ceiling painters of the past and has adopted their strategies for rendering the body in forced perspective. When we see figures from the low vantage point at which Dancey presents them, they seem to loom and float above us, and naturally appear in a mythical light. With a few symbolic props, Dancey's divine aerialists each inhabit a space that stretches to a three hundred and sixty degree horizon and invoke associations that are at once religious, erotic, and puzzling.
Taking its title from a Spanish word for an archaic theological science devoted to the study of flying beings, Volandismo is an exhibit of works that freely mix myths and dreams, mysteries and revelations.
Painter and illustrator Mark Dancey's work has appeared in many consumer magazines including Spin, Esquire, and Details, as well as on CD covers for rock bands. Also a publisher of and major contributor to Motorbooty Magazine in the late 1980's through the 1990's, Dancey's work has been shown in galleries across the country. Dancey lives and works in Detroit.
Volandismo opens June 13, 2009 at Re:View Contemporary Gallery.
