The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS! @ NOWhere Limited

06 June 2009

The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS! @ NOWhere Limited

Saturday, May 30th was such a great day in Ned! (That's Nederland, Colorado, near Boulder.) NOWhere Limited Gallery hosted a really fun opening party for the current show: "The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS!" Mark Mothersbaugh, well-known as a founding member of the innovative band DEVO, has been creating artwork in many forms for more than 3 decades. His love of visual art began in childhood, just after it was discovered that he was extremely nearsighted and legally blind. His first correctional glasses offered the young Mothersbaugh a new view of the world, fueling a lifelong infatuation with imagery and illustrations... READ MORE

Saturday also happened to be the day Tony Hawk was in town to dedicate Ned's new volunteer-built Nathan Lazarus Skatepark! Here's some pictures from both events...

The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS! @ NOWhere Limited Gallery May 30 - June 28, 2009
Above: Elisha and Alanna presenting Alanna's favorite of Mark's rugs: "Hatching a Plot," game show hostess-style! See / buy this rug, and all those from the show: here

The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS! @ NOWhere Limited Gallery May 30 - June 28, 2009
Above: Various revelers at the opening party. Note H-Bomb and Greg each "getting awesome" in their own way!

The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS! @ NOWhere Limited Gallery May 30 - June 28, 2009
Above: An installation view of the show. Note the "rug tags" hand-written by Mark Mothersbaugh, a nice touch!

The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS! @ NOWhere Limited Gallery May 30 - June 28, 2009
Above: Alanna, Elisha, Scott and H-Bomb pose in front of the show's title and Mark's rug "Shoes," which is fast becoming one of my favorite images from this show...

Mark Mothersbaugh chats via live video at NOWhere Limited Gallery.
Above: Mark was away working on a soundtrack for an upcoming film, but attended the opening via live video! It was so fantastic to chat with him... he talked about the projects he's working on (including a DEVO album, the first in more than a decade!) and showed us his lovely hotel room and mini-bar... He was so down-to-earth and charming!

Tony Hawk in Ned, CO! for the Nathan Lazarus Skatepark Grand Opening.
Above: Here's Tony Hawk! It was raining and raining up until the point in this picture, but Tony hung in there a gave Ned a thrilling performance!

Above: More Tony! Most of my pictures are like this, through some strangers legs or from way up high, since it was so crowded! Alanna and I tried to start the chant "Toe Knee! Toe Knee!" a la the Pixies song, but alas, it didn't catch on... (but, you know, that song's about a superhero bike rider not a superhero skater, anyways...)

NOWhere Limited's Booth at the Nathan Lazarus Skatepark Grand Opening
Above: There was a fun festival surrounding the skatepark event.. Here's me at NOWhere Limited's booth!

Thanks again to all those who helped us out that big Saturday: Alanna, Greg and Maggie, Paul and Cheri, Angie and of course, Michael Pilmer - Mark Mothersbaugh's rep. It was great!

Here's the link to "The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: RUGS! RUGS! RUGS!" at NOWhere Limited:
http://nowherelimited.com/mark_mothersbaugh

It's on view at the gallery until June 28th, so if you're nearby, do c'mon in and check it out! It's dazzling!

Here's a link to Look Into My Owl's coverage of the show: http://lookintomyowl.com/mark-mothersbaugh-nowhere-limited-exhibition-photos.html

Bio:

Elisha Sarti is a painter who loves to collage. Her paintings often mimic the deterioration of mass-produced items; popular advertisements, magazines and other ubiquitous commercial papers provide Elisha with a wealth of raw material for imagery and art supplies alike. She’s currently building a new acrylic on canvas series featuring odes to junkmail, supermarket circulars and tabloids. Follow her progress on this project and more via the links from her website: ElishaSarti.com

In addition to working as an artist, Elisha is co- founder / co-director at NOWhere Limited – Contemporary Art, a retailer and publisher of fine art prints and other artists’ multiples.

She's in the process of moving from Boulder, Colorado to New York, along with her husband artist Scott Lickstein, and Tycho, the dog who acts more like a cat.

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Artist's Statement:

Flukes enchant me. I collect them like treasures. Many of the oddest make their way into my paintings and mixed media pieces.

My artwork often contains subtle odes to small oversights in quality control such as a misaligned print in a supermarket circular or seam lines in a plastic product. Similarly, I’m fascinated by word combination and layers of meaning. Idiosyncrasies, like an unusual phrase from a marketing slogan or a snippet from an errant translation between languages, can mutate into imagery or textural marks that appear in my work. I sometimes fancy I can divine mystic subliminal messages from seemingly ordinary advertising copy. It’s a lot of fun!

There’s beauty in garbage. As a mass-produced item deteriorates the specific course of its decomposition renders it unique. The irony of this cycle appeals to me and is the basis for many of my ideas. I am captivated by the sensibility of decay as well. Simulating an eroded texture is often where I begin my creative process. To achieve these decayed effects, I build up a surface from layers of paint and collaged elements.

The series $AVE/PRODUCE and Junkmail² are literally fashioned from trash: used tape, junkmail and paperboard boxes that once contained food or other goods. The imagery in these pieces is also recycled; I coaxed it out of the very matter I used to make the surfaces.

On occasion I stage experiments to generate weirdness instead of allowing the surface layer to determine the content. In one series I asked Google Image Search to make value judgments by searching for pictures representing subjective words like pretty, worst and perfect. The distinctly non-human results were collaged and transferred to canvas.

I’m currently forming a new body of work. In this as yet untitled series I paint acrylic on canvas with imagery from my recent junkmail collages and sketches.

06 June 2009