Prefab77: 'Shot at from Both Sides'
A welcome addition to the area's exhibition venues is The BLDG (The Building) in Covington. Founded by Mike Amann and Roman Titus, The BLDG in Covington is an alternative space in the 'grand' tradition with its exposed brick walls, peeling paint, uneven plywood floor, and a receptionist desk made out of wood pallets. The storefront space has an ambitious and earnest manifesto: it “is a place, a process, a collaboration, creating and exhibiting diverse, provocative art that challenges patrons to thought and introspection.” It also “challenges patrons and artisans (an interesting choice of words, more associated with the crafts than fine art) to embrace 'New Brow,' an Art Movement generally associated with offshore and coastal markets. This movement is art of and for all people, without barrier, frequently birthed in the blighted and forgotten monuments of our cities.”
The inaugural exhibition at The BLDG is 'shot at from both sides,' work by Prefab77, a trio of artists from Newcastle in the north of England.
Prefab77 describes its work as “dark, funny, beautiful, part fantasy, part social commentary...” The collective of three, who according to its Web site left New York City after 9/11, is known for its “monotone paste-ups, including large scale, building sized pieces,” according to Street Artists: The Complete (! - my exclamation point) Guide (Mathieson, Tàpies and Arango, 2009).
The trio takes found imagery and blows it up to billboard-size prints for its street pieces and uses the same images for gallery-sized works, both unique paintings that start with a silk-screened print, à la Warhol, and editioned serigraphs. The paintings are embellished with handwork and presented in deliberately precious/pretentious gilded frames.
Prefab77's aesthetic is of the “more is better” variety as images are combined in a montage, an effect courtesy of Cubism, with words picked out as in the Dadaist tradition. Color is dour and shaded with the exception of a lavender the color of Elizabeth Taylor's eyes that appears as an accent in numerous works.
Given the nature of Prefab77's artmaking, it's easy to see influences from Roy Lichtenstein (Ben Day dots of commercial lithography), Robert Indiana (graphic-design like images), and Robert Rauschenberg in general as well as the aforementioned Cubism, Dada, and Warhol. One unexpected source is Ingres (1780-1867), the French neoclassical painter. His Valpinçon Bather (1806) presents the back of a turbaned female nude with her face turned away. Prefab77's Britannia (2009) is practically a direct steal, just flip the image and turn her head to a profile. One difference is that the collective's nude is wrapped in a Union Jack, hence the title. Prefab77 is a sophisticated bunch of lads.
While Prefab77's independent - or domesticated - works use the same motifs of appropriated and juxtaposed images as its site-specific and larger works, social commentary, wry humor, it's the public works where Prefab77 shines. For it 'bigger is better.'
For The BLDG exhibition, the talented trio created a mural in the front of the gallery, papering the walls with its familiar printed images. A masked face is repeated in a frieze above the door and storefront windows. Only its eyes with a penetrating gaze are shown. It's impossible to be certain if it's male or female. The eyes peer out from behind a knitted or perhaps chain mail balaclava. Untitled here, it raises the question of the figure's identity. Terrorist, ninja, medieval knight, or just someone on a ski slope? The title of a print with the same image is Heist (2009). I prefer the ambiguous.
On an adjacent wall, the same image is shrunk and repeated ad infinitum to flank the vampish female of the Punk Turned Dandy (2009) print. She is taking off or putting on a garment of some kind. Cherubs, coy cupids appear above her shoulders. To her left is a field of images of women seductively looking over their shoulders with coquettish averted gazes.
On the opposite wall are larger than life-size motorcycle-jacketed figures wearing thigh-high boots. They appear singly in Intruder (2009). Prefab77 adds two car doors, which are also papered with swathes of its favored images, as bas-relief elements. The mural is big and brash and shows the collective's prowess working on this scale.
Like its street-art predecessors, not to mention earthworks, performance, conceptual, and other artists who originally eschewed making gallery art, i.e., saleable artwork, Prefab77 accommodates avant-garde loving collectors with paintings and prints that could go over a sofa. It even has its own sales pitch: “You can always warm yourself in front of one of our Prefab originals. Most of our art is a mixture of acrylic, spray-paint, varnish and inks on wood or paper. Their flammability makes them a sound investment for the future as fuel prices continue to rise.”
