 This exhibition offers ersatz branding on T-shirts and acrylic on canvas consumer products [formerly known as paintings] by local designer and illustrator Shawn Wolfe. He has done many illustrations for the print version of Boing Boing. The Seattle-based designer and illustrator is best known as the man behind BeatkitTM. The so-called "brand without a product" has served as inspiration for the improbable RemoverInstallerTM as well as the artist’s global "Panic Now" campaign, paintings, t-shirts, comics, sculpture and performance. His work tends to focus on deconstructing and reconstructing both consumerism and brand fetishism. Examples have appeared in many publications and is featured in Next: The New Generation in Graphic Design (North Light Books). He has designed album packages for the culture-jamming performance group Negativland and counts K2, Sony, Island/Def Jam, Listen.com, Neverstop, Dawls and Chelsea Films among his clients. A monograph of his work, Uncanny (Houston) was published in 2000.
"It would appear that instead of the advertising promoting the product, the product promotes the advertising."
"By now it should be obvious that a product is merely an inducement to the consumer to purchase the advertising." Gary Wolf, Wired January 1996
Imagine the bastard love child of Ed Ruscha and Roy Lichtenstein and you would probably come up with the oeuvre of Shawn Wolfe. In the twenty first century the artist has become the brand. The individuality of style that each artist brings to their work is subsumed and consumed by the viewer in a linear process. The exhibit "Ha Get'em" showing at OK OK is very up front about this anal-retentive progression.
No where is this process more clear than in the piece "Jump the Shark" an iconic reference to when a television sit-com has gone past its prime. "the signs shown are made of heavily glazed wood," Shawn Wolfe. Using the Lichtenstein text ballon, Wolfe states "Come On People! These Sharks aren't going to Jump Themselves!". He is reflecting how any creative enterprise is both made and undone by the human touch. We all remember the episode of Happy Days when the Fonz jumped over the shark while on water skis. For the cultural literati, this eponymous event came to signify the downfall of one tele-reality to be replaced by another.
Spray cans spewing pink paint have had all textual signifiers removed to become a visual essay on form devoid of any cultural commentary on the place of street graffiti in our daily lives. The forms of a couple in the lower part of the can seem to be from an i-pod commercial run amok. The black background gives the aura of a contemporary still life with the yellow blast bubble on the can equally erasing any meaning.
Wolfe is perhaps at his most strident with "Will Work". The form of the piece could come from any street panhandler that you could encounter on Capitol Hill. By removing it from one context and placing it in a place to be perceived aesthetically, Wolfe is stepping into the shoes of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and perhaps most tellingly the Fluxus movement. The assorted t-shirts reflecting the themes or brands of the works provide the viewer the option to wear the art right out of the store.
"Ha Get'em," at OKOK opened Fri. Aug. 19 and runs through mid-September. Located in the Historic Loveless Building, OK OK is at 709 Broadway Ave. East.
206-322-7523
Hours
11 a.m.-7 p.m. Tues.-Sat.
noon-7 p.m. Sun
Closed Mondays
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