RESUME :: BIOGRAPHY

Epicks, July 10-17 2003
Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age (Thru July 25)
Critics' Most Wanted

By Alison Bing

How Mao, 2002 (after Andy Warhol's Mao, 1972), sewn dollar bills, 20" x 16"

If thought were a crime, everyone who visits "Illegal Art" would become a multiple felon -- and several of the artists on view here would be nothing short of criminal masterminds, whose rap sheets might read something like this:

Packard Jennings: Armed with wit as sharp as a Wal-Mart box cutter, this conceptual trespasser covertly installed phony packaged products in Wal-Mart stores such as "2 for $5," a "genuine oak" picture frame containing the likeness not of the typical gamboling puppy but Mussolini, who once dictated Italian politics much the way Wal-Mart now dictates American culture. Jennings is also responsible for "Fallen Rapper Pez," Pez dispensers topped with the heads of Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls and Eazy-E that Jennings proposed to the candy company as new models in several uproariously earnest letters.

Ray Beldner: Very few artists make real money out of art, but it takes a true renegade to make real art out of money. Beldner has willfully defaced many $1 bills to make his "Looking Like a Million," an exacting re-creation of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portrait created entirely out of folded, cut and sewn cash -- and conceptually dismantled our established system for assigning aesthetic, artistic and monetary value in the process.

Enrique Chagoya: This provocateur is known for inciting visual riots such as "The Adventures of the Bioethicist Cannibal," which is incendiary to the point of arson. This fold-out codex is action packed, each panel loaded with pistol-packing cartoon characters, danger signs, googly-eyed Mayan gods gone astray and images from Warhol, Goya and Courbet spoofed for Chagoya's own subversive ends. In one panel is a maze with cultural stereotypes like a blond bimbo and Fu Manchu in the corners, while at the center a Klansman is throwing signs and saying, "Yo." Bystanders beware: Chagoya's scorching satire will not let you remain neutral or tear your eyes away.

David Byrne and Danielle Spencer and Aric Obrosey display equally evocative works. -- Alison Bing, special to SF Gate

SFMOMA Artists Gallery, Building A, Fort Mason, SF; Tue-Sat 11 am-5:30 pm; free; (415) 441-0614. For upcoming events associated with this show, visit www.illegal-art.org.