"I hate how you're just born out of nowhere, forced to go to school and get an education so you can get a job. What if I wanted to be a duck?" —Internet meme of unknown origins, quoted in the DUCKS press release
Artist and curator Ryan Travis Christian’s theme for DUCKS, a show at Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, while absurd, firstly seems limiting. Make a piece featuring a duck? Pretty literal. But, once we stepped into the space at the opening on Friday, which featured 101 pieces including a Dolan the duck meme drawing tacked up on a ceiling beam and a performance piece featuring a comedy/magic show, we knew we were wrong.
Christian’s own work is illustrative, abstract, and features a lot of cartoon iconography. So it makes sense to theme a show around an animal that is often portrayed as silly in cartoons. (Think Daffy and Donald.) Having recently moved to a house with a pond in the suburbs of Chicago, he’s had a lot of time to observe them. “I have my flock of ducks down to a science now—the males and females, the squabbles, mating, who runs the gang.” He’s also known for putting together massive group shows together, which, he said, “were a nightmare logistically but socially a lot of fun. It’s just a big mess. I do this more for the social element—bring my friends, meet new friends on the way.”
The show’s salon-style set-up has more of a school-assignment feel than a normal gallery show, but it brings together a community of artists who, if they weren’t friends before the show, might be afterwards. “He’s an artist that loves to build communities..." said Brian Willmont, the owner of Greenpoint Terminal Gallery. "It’s just fun for him to make everyone create a piece based on one thing. Almost all the pieces were made specifically for this show.”
And while the theme is wacky, the quality of the art is high. “I feel like this kind of show, you used to see it a lot more often—these sort of fun, quirky shows, small, but with really good art in it. I feel like the art world takes itself a lot more seriously now,” said artist Taylor McKimens, whose ink-on-paper portrait of a duck brings a feeling of stillness and calm amongst the rest of the frenzied duck gang.
OC favorites included Josh Reames’s Fucked Up Mallard, a surreal painting featuring a dismantled duck—a perfectly rendered duckbill and three duck eyes floated around a background of green and brown mist—and Morgan Blair’s Quack is Wack, a neon-orange and green “magic-eye” painting, which turns a duck pattern into an optical illusion. It was also great to see two animations amongst the paintings and drawings, by Ben Jones and Jacob Ciocci.
Ryan Travis Christian aims to double the amount of artists in the show, and bring it to Los Angeles in March and Chicago in the summertime.
DUCKS is open to the public through November 29
Artist and curator Ryan Travis Christian’s theme for DUCKS, a show at Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, while absurd, firstly seems limiting. Make a piece featuring a duck? Pretty literal. But, once we stepped into the space at the opening on Friday, which featured 101 pieces including a Dolan the duck meme drawing tacked up on a ceiling beam and a performance piece featuring a comedy/magic show, we knew we were wrong.
Christian’s own work is illustrative, abstract, and features a lot of cartoon iconography. So it makes sense to theme a show around an animal that is often portrayed as silly in cartoons. (Think Daffy and Donald.) Having recently moved to a house with a pond in the suburbs of Chicago, he’s had a lot of time to observe them. “I have my flock of ducks down to a science now—the males and females, the squabbles, mating, who runs the gang.” He’s also known for putting together massive group shows together, which, he said, “were a nightmare logistically but socially a lot of fun. It’s just a big mess. I do this more for the social element—bring my friends, meet new friends on the way.”
The show’s salon-style set-up has more of a school-assignment feel than a normal gallery show, but it brings together a community of artists who, if they weren’t friends before the show, might be afterwards. “He’s an artist that loves to build communities..." said Brian Willmont, the owner of Greenpoint Terminal Gallery. "It’s just fun for him to make everyone create a piece based on one thing. Almost all the pieces were made specifically for this show.”
And while the theme is wacky, the quality of the art is high. “I feel like this kind of show, you used to see it a lot more often—these sort of fun, quirky shows, small, but with really good art in it. I feel like the art world takes itself a lot more seriously now,” said artist Taylor McKimens, whose ink-on-paper portrait of a duck brings a feeling of stillness and calm amongst the rest of the frenzied duck gang.
OC favorites included Josh Reames’s Fucked Up Mallard, a surreal painting featuring a dismantled duck—a perfectly rendered duckbill and three duck eyes floated around a background of green and brown mist—and Morgan Blair’s Quack is Wack, a neon-orange and green “magic-eye” painting, which turns a duck pattern into an optical illusion. It was also great to see two animations amongst the paintings and drawings, by Ben Jones and Jacob Ciocci.
Ryan Travis Christian aims to double the amount of artists in the show, and bring it to Los Angeles in March and Chicago in the summertime.
DUCKS is open to the public through November 29