"When Smoking Was Cool" at Black Maria Gallery (Review III)

Black Maria Gallery, located in Atwater Village, caters to the underground art scene, attempting to show artists that engage with social and political issues through the "low-brow, avant-garde, or subversive". Their current exhibition "When Smoking Was Cool" features artists whose work itself seems "cool", utilizing strategies that are considered to exist outside of the elitist art world's value system.
The show is a charming, tongue-in-cheek commentary about our culture's zealous knee-jerk reaction to the evils of smoking. The catalog offers artist's statements about the taxation of tobacco and alcohol products over other societal ills, and one gets the sense of a community of artists within this gallery structure that want to make a political point with their work, mocking mainstream culture with their underground sensibility.
Artist Anthony Ausgang has two works in this show, both featuring his signature animated style. Famous for fiercely opposing what he calls "art bureaucracy", Ausgang's work seems ardently satirical even at first glance, denying any high-minded or theoretical interpretation. Borrowing from mid-century cartoons, he figures retro cats, down and out but smiling, picking at trashed cigarettes on the street.
"The Butt Picker" (left) besides having a hilarious title, was provocative, parodying the opinion high society may have of the poor, the homeless, and the smoker. The retro feel to this piece forces the viewer to see the depiction as antiquated, thus Ausgang succeeds in pointing out the flaws and arbitrariness of some societal views with his ironic caricature.

Another piece successful in poking fun at upper-crust society is by the artist Candy and titled "Gold Digger". The piece is acrylic on wood, and uses an animation aesthetic as well, perhaps as a way of distancing the work from "high art" as Ausgang has done. Candy also creates a caricature, of a rich gold-digging woman, exuding sexuality and greed, fiercely chomping down upon a cigarette. The result is an amusing pastiche on the leisure-class and a different riff on "smoker culture".

Paul Chatem shows two works, combines of wood and painted, working gears. He creates a space of industrial hell, where the working class are portrayed as living in the bowels of some terrible, fantasy factory with roots in the industrial revolution. One can see some influence from animation in his works as well, the pop and surrealist aesthetic of the "underground" art scene prevalent in most works in this show.

Works by Sarah Stephens, painted on matchbooks and cigarette boxes, evoke a yearning for a simpler time. The color palette, compositions, and technique of cutting out and color blocking certain parts of a landscape in these small works reminded me a lot of Ed Ruscha and I wonder if her vision of Los Angeles relics from the 50's and 60's is a bit derivative of some of his work. Nonetheless, the works are appealing and match with the show's theme of transporting the viewer to the past, though to different ends for each piece.
Artists Christine Karas, Stacy Lande, Brett Manning and Harry Sudman all showed portraits of characters that are smoking, or are somehow representative of a counter-cultural movement, whether it be prostitutes or musicians. Brett Manning's piece was a caricature of a french woman, which had very beautiful pencil-work and a personal quality about it.

Shark Toof is the artist that exhibited the majority of works in the "When Smoking Was Cool" show. His style combines a pop aesthetic, with the design elements of graffiti art, which is what he is best known for. The works he showed here were indicative of urban Los Angeles street art and the playfulness often found in street art...these pieces were the highlight of the visit. First, a series of fantasy portraits of celebrities smoking embody the disdain of this underground art movement for popular culture icons, or at least Shark Toof's willingness to create a joke at their expense. He reprises the visages of Barack Obama, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson as characters from a cheesy horror movie from the 1950's. My favorite is "Kanye West" dressed as a mummy, with a mouthful of lit cigarettes (below with "Barack Obama").

These certainly fit in with the theme of the caricature in the show, and in dismantling iconography of contemporary popular culture.
The other pieces he shows were more indicative of his street and graffiti art style. "Smoke Now Cry Later" is a mixed media piece that looks like an urban wall scene, covered in posters and graffiti. Shark Toof's signature shark figure and images of cigarettes are pasted upon blurry female faces. Broken and twisted butts spell out the title, and two burning cigarettes spell out the iconic L.A. sign in the bottom right corner. This piece embodies the gritty and gutsy nature of street art within the space of the gallery. The message and title of the piece is emblematic of the fearless attitude of this artistic sub-culture, living in the moment and challenging established notions of artistic value and pedigree.