Colors and chaos at Contra Galleries’ ’80s show
BY ROSE ADAMS
Colors explode and demons lurk
in the “The Art of New York:
1980s,” an exhibition by White-
Hot Magazine at Chelsea’s Contra
Galleries. The show brings together
the past and present work of streetart
luminaries from the ’80s and ’90s,
like Rick Prol, LA II and Keith Haring,
among many others.
“It’s a postage-stamp collection of a
certain era,” said Linus Coraggio, the
show’s curator. “It’s a selection of the
best of the 1980s.”
Coraggio’s impressionistic paintings,
motorcycle sculptures and steel chairs
feature prominently in the collection.
While the works vary in their color
and subject matter — some forgoing
the era’s classic bubble-gum palette
and cartoonish fi gures — they all embody
a certain carefully executed chaos.
T-shirts become canvases; scraps
of metal bend into furniture. But while
the materials may appear raw and haphazard,
the precision of the construction
is anything but.
“You’re always striving for one unifi
ed goal,” said painter Rick Prol, who
has four pieces in the show. “There’s
no parts.”
Each work combines elements of
street art with the execution of a master.
In one of Coraggio’s paintings,
bright pink lines scatter over shades
of green and turquoise. From afar,
the piece looks like a tornado of color.
But up close, its many strokes appear
precise and purposeful, adjoined like
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Other artists, like Prol, evoke the
grittiness of street art by painting on
found materials. To create his largest
painting in the show, “Untitled”
(2018), Prol slathered oil paint over a
Visible Woman model kit, an anatomy
kit from the 1950s.
“You can call it expressionist, but
those terms aren’t really enough,” Prol
said about his style. “It’s more alla prima”
— a technique in which wet paint
is layered over itself.
Through the artists’ use of found
materials and psychedelic colors,
many of the works in the show tell
their own myths. Prol’s painting “Untitled”
(2018) depicts a green demon
balancing on a tightrope with a guitar
in one hand and a bloodied dagger in
the other. The subject looks downward
thoughtfully, his mouth open, as if trying
to decide which object to deploy.
All four of Prol’s paintings feature
green fi gures whose varying expressions
suggest their different dispositions,
“Untitled” (2019), by LA II, acrylic on canvas, 24 in. x 24 in., left, and
“Kembra” (2018), by M. Henry Jones.
“Untitled” (2011), by Linus Coraggio,
acrylic on board, 22 in. x
30 in.
like characters in a play. Together,
the paintings seem to exist in their
own dystopian universe.
“It’s my language and my invention,
and it’s never something I can’t tap
into,” Prol said about his process.
The myths implicit in the show’s artworks
speak not only to their own subuniverses,
but to a lost era. Many of
the artists and attendees at the show’s
opening reminisced about the ’80s art
scene, lauding it as a period of peak
creativity and opportunity for New
York City artists.
“It’s nothing like what it was,” Coraggio
told me. “Each generation has
their own version of it. But in the ’80s
it was this mass bubble that burst.”
Others lamented the market-driven
nature of the current art world, the effect
of social media on art consumption,
and the sheer number of artists
today.
“The real difference now is that,
then, if the artist was good, the art
would surface,” said an attendee.
“Now that there are so many artists,
there’s a serious possibility that a good
artist could be ignored.”
As artists and collaborators perused
the art, they exchanged memories of
the 1980s, from the hardcore music
played at gallery openings to their stories
from the Lower East Side.
In a way, “The Art of New York:
1980s” does more than display an
iconic period of art. It also tells a story
about Manhattan’s lost art culture
— a story that’s gritty, meticulous and
somewhat mythical, just like the art on
display.
“The Art of New York: 1980s” is
on view on at Contra Galleries, 122
W. 26th St., fi fth fl oor, through Feb.
28. The gallery is open from 9 a.m.
to 9 p.m. For more information, visithttps://
contragalleries.com/pages/
the-art-of-new-york-1980s
PHOTOS BY ROSE ADAMS
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