{"id":620,"date":"2003-05-23T12:41:13","date_gmt":"2003-05-23T19:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i81.a52.mywebsitetransfer.com\/?p=620"},"modified":"2010-06-23T12:49:12","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T19:49:12","slug":"heroes-and-villians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dactylfoundation.org\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"Heroes and Villians, mixed media on decks"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 23-June 28, 2003<\/strong><\/p>\n

Heroes and Villains, mixed media on decks\u00a0curated by\u00a0Jon Buscemi, Matt Sohl, Michelle Harb, and\u00a0Jason Dill.<\/p>\n

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ARTnews
\nSeptember 2003
\nby Melissa Gronlund
\nFor this novel exhibition, the Dactyl Foundation invited a mixed bag of 50 skateboarders and artists to design plain wooden boards. Rather than the Chris Johansen\/Barry McGee esthetic one might have expected, the surprisingly rich and varied grouping encompassed everything from heavy metal-esque Fraktur to graffiti tags to idiosyncratic self-portraits. Young males were clearly the dominant skateboarding demographic.<\/p>\n

The subjects seemed lifted from the margins of math-class notebooks- favorites were figures from video games, sports teams, and comicbooks, and women with big breasts. Jamie Story’s O.J. depicted O.J. Simpson running down the football field with a red bullet hole in his helmet, while SSUR, a graffiti artist, silk-screened a pixilated image of a naked woman across four boards.<\/p>\n

Aggressive posturing was fully in evidence- sample titles were High School Revenge Fantasy, Inner Conflict, and Chomp on This. For the arresting Bullets Can’t Stop Them, KENT painted his board as a target, shot at it, and then sprinkled the bullets on the floor. Some of the best boards were linked to street culture. As if drawing a tattoo, Tom Sachs burnt a likeness of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. on the board’s polished surface. Erik Rossetti, Ray Mate, and Jon Buscemi likewise used theirs as eulogies, each commemorating Keenan Milton, a skateboarder who died in 2001.<\/p>\n

A stand-out was GOOD’s How Long Did That Take You?, for which the skater and graffiti artist carved his board into a fearsome expression, resembling a Polynesian tribal mask with wheels. Another was actor Willem Dafoe’s quip on skateboarding’s maturity level. Channeling kindergarten arts and crafts, he contributed a board decorated with gold spray-painted macaroni.<\/p>\n