Are they helping or hindering? "The Rights of Man," from Marcus Kenney's first Memphis exhibition.
Pop culture connoisseurs will recognize the tots in Marcus Kenney's collages as kindred spirits to outsider artist Henry Darger's Vivian Girls and cartoonist Morrie Turner's Wee Pals.
"I like to use recurring characters," says Kenney, whose first Memphis exhibition is on view now at David Lusk Gallery.
Savannah, Ga., artist Marcus Kenney uses paint, marble dust and discarded paper to create cartoonish dolls: Here, "Justice Liberty and Equality," currently on view at David Lusk Gallery.
Are they helping or hindering? "The Rights of Man," from Marcus Kenney's first Memphis exhibition.
The Savannah, Ga.-based artist uses paint, marble dust, stickers and discarded paper items to create cartoonish dolls that frolic across oversized canvasses.
"Justice Liberty and Equality" features three figures -- a blonde-haired, blue-eyed chain smoker wearing a Viking helmet and carrying a bloody sword; an African-American tot wielding an American Flag; and a stiff, doll-like girl frozen in mid-play. Conjured from acrylics, wallpaper scraps, color samples and a mimeographed musical score, they resemble the patriotic trio depicted in Archibald Willard's iconic "Spirit of '76."
In "Epoch 2020," three youthful astronauts share a barren landscape with a pair of penguins. In "Vigil," another adolescent trio, disguised as streetwalkers, lounge against a backdrop with graffiti. And in "The Rights of Man," two able-bodied youngsters reach toward a third on crutches, hovering between helping her or knocking her to the ground.
Venture closer, and you'll see the layers of colorful paper that Kenney used to create a paved sidewalk, a moonscape or an institutional room.
"I don't care if something is obscured or covered up, because I'm using the paper as paint," says the artist, on the phone from his studio in Savannah's Victorian district, where his collections of cigar bands, children's book illustrations and paint-by-number paintings have been accumulating for the last 10 years.
It's easy to read regional influences in Kenney's work, but he says, "I don't really see my work as Southern oriented. Obviously, it has that perspective because of who I am, but I don't want to be known as just a Southern artist."
That Southern-ness is inherent in the 10 plaster sculptures that stand sentry on the gallery floor.
Although they were mass-produced by a group of friends, Kenney's "Babies" look alternately pensive and mischievous. Part kewpie dolls, part totems, the doll-shaped sculptures have been rendered in a rainbow of colors, ranging from bright pink to light-absorbing dark brown.
The "Babies" at Lusk, Kenney explains, are leftovers from an ambitious installation that brought 300 of the tiny 3-D tots to the marble staircase at Savannah's Jepson Center for the Arts last year.
In the main gallery at David Lusk, Mike Force's fanciful Terry Gilliam-like paintings share real estate with Shawn Mathews' no-nonsense architectural renderings of Clark Tower and Idlewild Church. Seven wood-and-paint assemblages by Cordy Ryman hang in the area linking the exhibition spaces.
"Crowded," work by Mike Force, Marcus Kenney, Shawn Matthews and Cordy Ryman
At David Lusk Gallery through June 28.
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