✨ Free & Open to the Public ✨
Opening Reception July 19th 6 - 9pm. Can’t make it to the show? Visit the gallery anytime Tues-Fri 10-5 & Sat 10-2
Steve Fairchild’s In a Flash constructions are “Disruptive Serenities” and “Intrusions into the Banal” that he aptly recalls, came into existence by a plethora of science fiction pop-art-culture movie themes in the post World War II nuclear age, and the inventive genre of creative ideas unthought of in the previous depression ridden decades of the 1930's and 40's. Extraterrestrial permutations abound in the later decades by Steven Spielberg types capitalizing on the other-worldly craze with an appetite for humor and horror.
Fairchild's brand of nightmarish cartoon madness, constructed by way of acidic discordant “color stimulations” portray dumb-founded citizens invaded by giant fang-toothed unicorn lizards from the depth of a nuclear polluted ocean, l as they wreak havoc on our land-locked doorstep; all this leads us to ask, from what corner of the artist's affable personality does this sprightly riotous propensity for whimsy (title caption: “County road under attack!) arise, with Ultraman and fighter jets to the rescue.
As an avid collector of 50’s memorabilia, obscure postcards, and Japanese MENKO game cards, the answers lie in how Fairchild reimagines animated cartoon characters as high art in visually explosive and farcically bizarre portrayal of a city under attack. His madcap war-of-the-worlds style Japanese manga and anime character portrayals takes us back to childhood collections of comic books and a simplified view of toy flying saucers and miniature jets raining down on our peaceful communities.
In the science-fiction tradition of Jules Verne (followed by Asimov, Bradbury, Clark, Herbert, Vonnegut, La Guin and many others), contemporary modern masters in the visual arts have followed suit, appropriating an abundance of literary references in graphic novels and comic strips to encapsulate a dynamic fusion of high art to popular culture and artistic innovation. Incorporating elements of satire and social commentary, borrowing from comic strip iconography, led by artists Roy Lichtenstein then Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Brian Donnelly, Takashi Murakami and Julian Opie for inspiration, he too pushes the boundaries of creativity by blending animated characters, super-flat contemporary Japanese art, street art (to gallery walls), and pop-art comics to challenge hierarchical notions of High Art.
Fairchild follows in their tradition with his own template of signature assemblages in kaleidoscopic combinations, rendering a satirical blend of comical sci-fi horror amid the well defined mid-western 1950's zeitgeist. In formalist terms, Fairchild's mixed media constructions are dominated by super-flat cut outs, a pop-art exuberance, three dimensional raised plexiglass, soothed and nuanced in brush work aluminum composite material (ACM), also raised, of skyscapes, maps, atmospheric voids, acrylic painted pastel tinted blends, actual MENKO game cards glued in place, and colorful plastic rivets applied in the corners. Steve Fairchild is both a craftsman and a keen academic observer of humanity with degrees in Sociology and American Studies. His “Humor of the Imagination” where “Our World is Time in a Flash” comes from discriminatively broad insights upon diverse American values. Raised in Wichita through elementary school years with high school in Philadelphia, early college in Seattle, finishing with a double major from WSU, earns Fairchild an east-coast outlook on urban conservatism and a west-coast progressive liberal value perspective mediated through a midwest sense of proportion, good humored enough to jest; and if from Wichita, one need not ask, what is it with these parking meters?
So look carefully; look for the raised historic figure in a crowd staring at the camera; notice the subtly raised sharp edges of the flying saucers; ask to see the MENKO game card glued on the back of each work when you buy it; find which photo of Wichita is not historic but current day; where exactly are the prefabricated military quonset-huts located; and finally, ask how to play MENKO.
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