Steve Hurd at A/B - painting - Los Angeles, California - Review Of Exhibitions

In his first solo present to view Steve Hurd puts a contemporary spin upon issues raised in the new exhibition "Hand Painted Pop." Hurd's large oil paintings re-create junk-mail ads, magazine overlays and product logos with the drippy mode of expression of early Warhol and Lichtenstein. on the contrary unlike the Pop artists, who favored mundane ads for things like refrigerators and cherry pies, Hurd takes obvious irony through the horns. His bits of visual detritus define a bleak world: the hardtimes reality of artists in the '90s

In the painting Not in the way that Long Ago, a painted version of an ARTnews cover--it exhibits a Robert Longo work and the caption "What Happened to the '80s?"--is juxtaposed with an ad for a green-haired move circularly doll dressed as an artist who is said to "paint colors upon eggs, and smiles on faces." sum of two units other works appropriate ads for Christmas cards that are handpainted by dint of the handicapped. The ads make a plea for purchasing art that tenders "honest value at a depressed price," thereby helping the artists achieve "greater independence." Like his source ads, Hurd walks a fine line between compassion and exploitation. on the other hand his desire to paint and his affect for technique finally mitigate what might otherwise strike one as being an exercise in cruelty. He is after more than the comedy of "pathetic" artists like Sean Landers or Cary Lebowitz.

In Kidcare, his greatest in quantity complex work, Hurd mounts a smaller canvas above a larger one, juxtaposing sum of two units ads that capitalize on fear: individual for a pet ID tag and the other for a photo ID program intended to stop child abduction. This edgy juxtaposition is then skewered by dint of an image which depicts real horror. The top canvas, by means of means of a hinge at the right, render free of accesss out to reveal on its turn end for end side a painted reproduction of the famous photograph from the Vietnam War of screaming, napalmed children. This is clap appropriation for a directed purpose--and a surprisingly resonant piece of political art.

The other works in the exhibit stick closer to art-world interests Indisgrace reproduces an ad hawking a kitsch ceramic figurine of a weeping, just-punished girl comforted through a puppy. A transparent sheath of dripping off-white paint overspreads the ad, oddly echoing the girl's tears without ridiculing them. Unlike Jeff Koon say, Hurd manages to find a kind of painterly solace in his appropriation of ridiculously "low" material. Another facet of Hurd's revisionist clap is evident in Snuggled lie close a looming 30-by-12-foot re-creation of the lie close fabric softener logo. The disjointed, drippy, pink and azure cardboard letters literally snuggle up against each other, while also intimidating us with their command to "snuggle" Here, the materials of the pathetic achieve an offbeat, Ruscha-like verse both collapsing and expanding our usual notions of explosion art.

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