March 20th, 2013
Los Angeles, California
The ease with which some art seduces one into a false sense of comfort is fascinating to behold and experience. Thus is the work of Llyn Foulkes (b. 1934 in Yakima, Washington). It beckons, it is a kin in magnetism to the Venus fly trap, a plant which eats the flesh of flies, yet looks fairly innocuous, somewhat cute, despite the jagged edges of its teeth-like leaves.
I tripped into the Hammer Museum yesterday evening. They were setting up for an event with Chinese lanterns strung along the courtyard of the Museum. I was there to see the Foulkes, exhibition, so… I zoomed by. I went upstairs and dove into the drawings, cartoons mostly, in the first room devoted to the Foulkes show. Spread over several rooms, more than 150 works comprising various stages of the living artist’s expansive career. The early drawings brim with edgy talent. Witty, pointed sharp cartoons on sexuality and undressing social norms, engage the viewer in a lively dialogue of startling poignancy.
An artist on multiple levels, a musician, visual artist, a person whose humor, is sharp pointed 
wit, with which he reaches out and prods minds, moves mountains. Mountains of knowledge, entrenched and deep, mountains of memory reaching up to the sky and scratching it. Piercing illusions, which never fold into neat mimetic representation, yet consistently demonstrate the ability to do so. As in this fabulous painting of a cow, the artist demonstrates deep understanding of representation as a visual option, a tool.
Big ideas on what it means to see, to know, to experience. For example, when one travels and takes pictures or buys post-cards it is as IF by doing so one proves that one was actually once somewhere worth recalling, someplace special. One painting from the 1970’s of the rugged facade of a mountain covered in photos of the same mountain reflects on this conundrum of being in which the representation of experience stands in place of the actual, indefinitely, perpetual.
Systematically communicating complex ideas about knowledge, knowing, being, and living in a world where values are defined by a corporate culture which taxes humans and creates markets for guns, by feeding boys and girls images of might that depend on the real world horror of weapons. A boy dreams of an actual gun as a ghostly superman reads him a bed-time story.
As in the above example Foulkes work oscillates from the concrete and specific reference to real world, using objects as symbols representing the object with an accuracy, that allows for information to completely dominate the viewer, who is trapped like an unwilling voyeur in an awkward situation where language and pure form undress, unwind, collapse.
Thoughtful works. Large ponderous canvas mimics postcard nostalgia of a American west blurred by
not existing in this dimension but rather… somewhere else. The colors, pallets muted and restrained, mostly intellectual playing with text and the language of signage: warning DANGER: this is the edge of this painting, past here is the frame, which is found-object, salvaged from somewhere or other and rescued, restored, transformed into a powerful boundary between the world of image and truth.
Foulkes exploration flowers in deep three-dimension tableaux that completely void the boundary between the framed and the unframed world. His seamlessly constructed part-cartoon part replica of traditional portraiture, yet arm or neck-tie piercing the frame, to inject the space around the art with LIFE in its precise handling of paint, and the light touch, unperturbed intensity of the swirling profound commentary on American life and our plastic disposable values.
The trademark mouse delivers a smooch on the cheek of the artist in this his self portrait in plaid shirt on a bare brown-burned looking ground. The worried look says so much… the mouse is too pleased to deliver his kiss. Who wants to be kissed by a rodent? Who cares if the rodent is a movie star? What matters when the world comes to an abrupt halt?
So many questions… this exhibition is worth seeing again. (I just made plans with artist, Skip Snow, to see it for a second time.)
In short, I LOVED this exhibition and would highly recommend that you get over to see it if you are in Los Angeles before May 19th, 2013, when the exhibit closes.
Warm regards,
Frau Kolb