Randy Twaddle's Reversal Drawings, which ended an eight-year hiatus
from the Texas art scene (during which he built a business and started
a family) prompted feelings of gratification and annoyance in about
equal measure: gratification because the work is so sharp and beautifully
executed; and annoyance because he's deprived us of the pleasure
of it for so damn long. Comprised of seven charcoal drawings, ten
digital inkjet prints with hand-applied gouache, and a DVD loop,
its title referred to the artist's practice of collecting cliches,
song titles and other phrases and reversing them (in the classic
deconstructive MO) to see what happens. What happens, also in about
equal measure, is amusement and insight.
Twaddle was born in Missouri, where he took a BFA from Northwest
Missouri State University in 1980; he completed his MFA at the University
of Houston in 1996. He's exhibited extensively throughout Texas,
beginning in 1983, as well as in such exotic locales as Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Some of the last works before
his timeout were large drawings of communications satellite dishes
(not DirectTV); the transmission of ideas and information has, for
some time, been an ongo-ing concern for him.
The charcoal Reversal Drawings are very large, approximately 5 feet
by 3 feet, and they follow the same format: the reversed phrase
appears on a twisting strip, as if fallen out of a Chinese fortune
cookie. In each drawing, the strip is more or less vertically aligned
and centered over a series of thin lines that run down the length
of the paper and suggest tire tracks. Twaddle draws from life and
is quite meticulous in pinning his strips of paper just so, to catch
light and obscure letters, making it something of a game to identify
the phrase. Other graphic elements are smudges of heavily worked
charcoal and lighter specks across the surface of the paper that
suggest neglect or abuse, like the paper has been tossed around
in the dirt and grit of the city; the smudges and specks stand in
sharp contrast to the meticu-lously clean lines of the pitch dark
lettering.
By contrast, the gouached digital inkjet prints are clean and pristine.
There are two scrolls to each print, horizontally aligned, usually
placed in opposite corners, and articulated by the
blackest gouache covering the rest of the print. The lighting in
these prints is more subdued and delicate, darker than in the drawings,
and that can make the "game" of identifying the phrase
more challenging; often enough, you have to wrack your memory for
the complementary word. For example, in Talented and Lovely/Unusual
and Cruel (all works 2003), the word "unusual" sits in
deep shadow, inviting you either to risk eyestrain or consult the
checklist.
But there's more to these drawings than fun and games. In Void and
Null, the strip rises pre-cipitously out of the "void"
and curves sharply back into "nullity"; a phrase usually
associated with commerce becomes more metaphysical. And when the
phrase Stripes and Stars is arranged to render "tripe stars,"
one has to think there's a political statement being made. Or, to
cite one more example, not in this show but from a selection of
this body of work that appeared at Moody Gallery the previous month,
the reversed phrase "determined and bound" reads "ermined
and bound," suggesting a rich linkage between luxury and bondage.
Even the initially amusing pairing of A Dog Named Boo, and You and
Me/Sniff and Scratch becomes more thought-provoking when you remember
the next line of that silly song: Traveling and living off the land.
The second phrase begins to suggest foraging, scraping to get by,
in uncertain conditions.
In his statement, Twaddle calls this practice of reversing common
phrases and cliches a "reclamation strategy particularly appropriate
for use in a culture that's tired and sick" (presumably, he's
already added "awe and shock.") Cliches become cliches
because they're useful shorthand, a common verbal currency. But
they also encourage laziness of thought. Twaddle's Reversal Drawings
are beautiful, trenchant reminders of that danger, at a time when
our political discourse-never very lofty to begin with-is further
debased by corporate sloganeering and the prattling cant of snake-oil
salesmen.
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