Posted on
2017-01-23
Morley’s embroideries, paintings, and works on glass are uniquely American. They come from a tradition of West Coast American painting that developed a distinct visual language of its own, generated as a countercurrent to European traditions. Like Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy, Morley’s oeuvre is fueled by Americana. These artists draw from a wide range of sources: comic book culture, punk and altrock music, and 1970s psychedelia. These references, piled atop each other, take part in so-called “clusterfuck aesthetics,” juxtaposing pop imagery with emblems of varied American subcultures. Rat Fink,
Kustom Kulture, African masks as tourist tchotchkes, Indonesian-inspired batiked tapestries that adorn college dorm rooms, and pot smoke’s purple haze. These visual touchpoints emphasize this country’s counter-cultural heritage as folkloric fodder.
The specific narratives that Morley references; A True Tale and Tehachepi, (sic), refer to anecdotes that Morley has painted many times over, culled from memoirs of the old west. The stories recount southern California in its nascency; the former involving an entrepreneur who made a fortune shipping cats to a ratinfested city, and the latter about native family life in a town where the wind was so strong it could alter the trajectory of a bullet. But the precise subject, origin, or narrative of each tale is hardly the point. Rather, he renders visual elements along each story’s periphery, allowing a single detail to shift and mutate via paint and thread.
Opposite – A True Tale, 2016
Exhibition runs through to February 18th, 2017
Bortolami Gallery
520 W 20th Street
NY 10011
New York
bortolamigallery.com
