Pop goes the easel

Kim Russo |

7/3/2008 - 7/4/08

When Santa Fe painter Joe Ramiro Garcia takes a walk outside, he looks at the ground instead of at the landscape. "On the sidewalk I'll find this weird note or this cool discarded object and take it back to the studio," Garcia explained during a phone interview. "I'll hang it on the wall and look at it, and eventually it ends up in a painting."

The objects Garcia collects from his walks — and from popular culture, cartoons, and art history — become images that he visually collages, using oil and alkyd paint, across the surface of the canvas. In his work, Garcia presents childlike juxtapositions of objects and images that directly reference the 1960s and '70s, Garcia's coming-of-age years. And although his iconography originates from his own experiences, Garcia intends for his work to be universal.

An exhibition of Garcia's recent paintings, opening Friday, July 4, at LewAllen Contemporary, is titled Karaoke, a word that acknowledges that all of Garcia's images are simulated, copied, or relate to the reproduction of consumerism. "I liked the title Karaoke because all my previous titles were negative," Garcia explained. "Karaoke is fun and kind of embarrassing. You are trying to make something look real, and it never will be real. The title is also an homage to previous painters I am inspired by. Painters don't share notes on how they paint, but I have enjoyed trying to crack the code."

Garcia employs trompe l'oeil painting techniques and a hand-applied, oil-based lithography process that convinces the viewer she is looking at an actual object, such as a piece of paper glued to the canvas. Yet everything in Garcia's paintings is made of oil or alkyd paint.

In Downtown, the viewer is confronted with a stark storefront across which unrelated images and objects are scattered: a graphite drawing of a woman's head is taped to the exterior of the storefront window, a McDonald's cup sits on the window ledge along with a plastic comb, the word beer has been printed in red Benday dots on the glass, and an inverted, rectangular rainbow has been painted in the upper left corner of the window itself. In this painting, Garcia is referencing multiple forms of reproduction. The coffee cup is both reproduced packaging and mass-produced food. The word beer in Benday dots suggests the coloring process of newspaper comics as well as Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Even the drawing of the woman's head, which suggests an original work of art, is a reproduction — a copy of a copy of a real person. On the storefront window to the left of this portrait (as if to nudge the viewer with the painting's central thesis) is a personified, cartoon hot dog with raised arms that frame the words The Original.

An intern at the gallery described Garcia's paintings as "big, weird postcards," and they do seem like messages from multiple locations and times. Many images are repeated, in different combinations, and each combination creates new references and meanings. A basketball might be a reference to sports or the artist Jeff Koons. A Coke bottle is equally
a reference to the product and artist Andy Warhol.

A used paintbrush appears frequently, usually hanging on a wall. "The paintbrush is a grab from Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and it also relates to my identity as a painter," Garcia said. "Also, as goofy as it is, we are all painting our own world. Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein all included printmaking as painting in their work. The brush didn't dominate anymore.

"I am having so much more creative wow-ness in my recent work because, by using the lithography process as a form of painting, I am reminded about where I began making my artwork, in the '60s and '70s, looking at Pop Art books." Garcia attended Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for two years.

"The years of our early development — for me it was the '60s and '70s — is something that I think we all carry with us," he said. "That older history, especially as older styles become retro, this is a place I can talk about because I know it. The '70s were such a strange time. There was an everyday cheesiness. I'd watch my sisters paint their fingernails weird colors, and that color was really our culture working with a paintbrush, our culture participating in painting. For me, painting has to have a pedestrian or homey way of being real. I did not grow up with fine art; I grew up with cheap reproductions from the Everything's a Dollar store."

In Nostalgia, woodworking tools lean against the wall above a pegboard. According to Garcia, "the tools, the bungee cords, nails, hammers in my work are about a connection with manhood. They are about running through my dad's garage and looking at tools but not knowing how to use them. In the paintings, the tools are about not being able to use the paintbrush as a man. You can't pick up the tool in the painting, because it isn't real; it is useless. You can use it only in your thoughts."

Above the tools in Nostalgia is a trompe l'oeil drawing of a dog's head. "The drawing was a gift from a man I met who had just gotten out of jail," Garcia said. "While incarcerated, he missed his dog, so he asked his cellmate to make a drawing of the dog from his verbal description."

Garcia was born in Houston and feels his work is "very Texas." "Living here gives me the opportunity to make images about the dirt, the grime, the downtown stuff of Texas," Garcia said. "Everyone here is so busy talking about the landscape and minimalism, and I adore minimalism. I just don't have the peace and the simplicity and the ultimate smooth technique. There is something else that I can do: a sort of neurotic mess that I can sort out, a visual dialogue of relationships I can make."

details
Karaoke, new paintings by Joe Ramiro Garcia
Opening reception 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, July 4; exhibit through July 27
LewAllen Contemporary, 129 W. Palace Ave., 988-8997