In a past solo exhibition, Don Swartzentruber confronted religion. His "Pop-Mennonite" exhibition at Goshen College in 2005 took a critical look at the intersection of Mennonite faith and popular culture via dark, surrealistic compositions. His current show at Spurious Fugitive gallery is, for the most part, secular in nature, and the palette of the paintings is, on the whole, brighter. The artist's tone of playful fantasy -- with an undercurrent of absolute seriousness -- remains intact, however.
"Views From the Sideshow" consists of eight banners, each painted on a large piece of unstretched canvas. Uniformly bright and superficially cheerful, the paintings depict caricatures in the style of a carnival artist. "A Pirate's Heart" presents a scowling, long-haired, saber-wielding pirate and a bikini-clad woman emerging from a treasure chest. "Rock & Roll" features a grinning guitar god in the midst of a solo. "Classic Western" shows a pig-tailed cowgirl being bounced from a bronco as a goofy rattlesnake looks on.
The caricatures in the paintings are the same silly characters -- the pirate, the cowboy, the sports hero, the rock star -- drawn by midway artists for millions of visitors to fairs and amusement parks around the world. Via these iconic tropes, artists can make money easily, and patrons can envision their uniqueness by putting their own faces into clichéd scenes. The universality of these fantasies is underscored in Swartzentruber's paintings by titles rendered in several different languages.
At that level, the banners seem straightforward and light-hearted, a gentle poke at the superficiality of the popular imagination, but as usual with Swartzentruber's work, there is a darker heart in the paintings. On occasion, the darkness rises to the surface: in "Most Valuable Player," a cartoonish football star is tackled by a giant fanged demon; in "Retratos Divinos," a haloed cherub is jabbed in the backside with a pitchfork by an equally cherubic devil; in "Portret Fantasie," a maiden perches on the back of a colossal monster, a horned skull clutched in its taloned fist.
In other paintings, the disturbing notes are more subtle. In "Jungle Love," a fair-skinned Tarzan gazes longingly at a dark-skinned jungle girl -- complete with tattered halter top and a bone in her hair; the racial juxtaposition, so different from the Hollywood version of Tarzan's jungle, hints at distasteful prejudices.
With these paintings, Swartzentruber successfully combines his talent for surrealistic social commentary -- executed with bite and sincerity -- with the garish, yet appealing, colors and forms of the populist carnival.
To purchase contact Spurious Fugitive, LLC: A Postmodern Gallery, 114 W. Colfax Ave., South Bend. Hours are from noon to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. |
