Opening this month at Zito Studio Gallery on Ludlow Street is an exhibit of new works by Joe Heaps Nelson in which the painter offers up subversive little slices of Americana.
Cheerleaders. Milk! Corn! Beef! Eggs! Pork! The jubilant teens proudly offer produce grown on their home turf. Bulldogs. Little friends with distorted faces that loyally sit at the end of the Barcalounger waiting for its owner to wake up from a carbohydrate induced coma and offer a little TLC. Highway rest stops. Filler' up and while you are at it, get yourself a bacon, egg and cheese McGriddle! Mmm! Wooly mammoths...well, see for yourself. Joe Heaps Nelson's view of American life is taken straight from the source. His imagery, derived from various sources ranging from old catalogues to photographs he has taken himself, is a window that reveals both the excitement and the banality of life in the heartland.
Nelson's paintings are snapshots, captured memories from a not so distant past. The faux leather interior of a 1970s Chevy Nova. A father and son racing slot cars. A pissy younger brother in a Boy Scout uniform. Cheerful stewardesses welcoming you aboard. And of course, there are the cheerleaders. Nelson's cheerleaders, a combination of Marcia Brady beauty and Juliette Lewis gawky are his trademark. He has painted many of them, over 100 to be exact. "I wanted overkill," he says. "I wanted to make the cheerleader mine in the way Degas has his ballet dancers." His dedication to the subject of cheerleading was so apparent that it got himself and friend Antony Zito kicked out of a high school football game in Illinois when the parents questioned his photographic interest in the pastime. "The grownups got nervous," he says with a laugh.
Aside from the cheerleaders and the football players in the summer of their youth, Nelson's work includes boxers ala Friday Night At The Fights, interpreted via the old black and white televisions most American families grew up with in the kitchen. Tractor trailers parked at a snowy rest stop in the Midwest, sans hookers or lot lizards. Western Landscape, which advertises the pre-mention McGriddle, is a perfect testament to the lack of creativity engineers have for our earth. The beautiful chunk of landscape is rudely interrupted with a fluorescent lighted Shell station, the parking lot that cuts into the foreground of the painting is "the final insult to the landscape," says Nelson.
By taking the images out of their original context, Nelson's paintings begin to shed the skin of America and expose the stereotypes that have been forced upon us. We celebrate our women when they take on traditional roles such as cheerleader, stewardess, and mother and we also love our muscle cars, but not when Shirley Muldowney is driving. For African Americans, the choices are limited to celebrated athlete or derelict in police custody. OJ Simpson can have his cake and eat it too.
Speaking with Nelson it is hardly his intention to be controversial. His approach to the subject matter is truly sincere, it is only when viewed as a collective that the bigger picture reveals itself. "I was always drawn to subjects that most people would consider too banal or commonplace to be an art subject. I always liked the idea of people thinking, 'Who would want a painting of that?', or more to the point, 'Why would anybody paint that?' I am an absurdist at heart."
Joe Heaps Nelson
September 15th - November 15th, 2005
Zito Studio Gallery | 122 Ludlow Street | NYC
