Three Snaps Up
Motive 807, through Jan. 30
Motive 807 has been selling sneakers, displaying unique toys, and hosting art shows for a year now. It’s DIY, which makes for interesting groups of relatively unknown artists. Most of it is really fresh, funny, and with a sizzling graphic sensibility, like “Three Snaps Up,” the current eight-artist show up in the store.
Store owner Fahad Mayahi says he’s happy to host local exhibitions. How does he pick artists? He shows the ones who buy shoes from him. It’s a reciprocal thing. Kim Swift organized this show as a farewell to Austin, she’s moving to the Big Apple and wanted to go out with a show. Her work is easily recognizable in its consistency; what varies from piece to piece is the level of emotion. Depraved isn’t the right word; her attitudes are straight from the heart.
She often takes a cute animal-like character and puts sad, dark elements around it. The way the character is built, it’s impossible for it not to be attractive like Deery Lou. This sets up a tension in her work that elevates it beyond the basic cartoon. With phrases like “You killed the part of me who caredâ” some of her text is embattled-relationship-themed. Other works use text as the background architecture, like the vampire pink-bunny piece that says, “You so far have failedâ and you suck real world.” Her painting technique is versatile. Some works are pretty tightly shaded and outlined. In a couple of the works, she lets herself develop a more abstract and complicated color scheme in the ground and adds a cute character as the final touch. She has an understanding of and facility with painting.
Matt Rodriguez is showing some of his funny photographs. Documenting street-art moments has become significant to the artist recently. He’ll wait for an interaction that is highly pedantic or a daily functional task and shoot a scene. Poster art is the most impractical process, but whimsy and happenstance can be nice. Like going to a shoe store for an art show. Jason Graham’s photo series is good, too. I even browsed the magazines like Artip (L.A.), AKA (12ozProphet NYC), and Sneaker Freaker (Australia). I enjoyed this quirky show and all the cool chews.
This article appears in January 27 • 2006.