E.T and a few Bananas is each the title of a collaborative drawing by Anthony Coleman and Andrew Jeffrey Wright and the title of their two-person exhibition. This drawing encapsulates a lot about their strategy to artwork: vivid coloration, a concentrate on characters from widespread tradition rendered via their very own extremely authentic interpretations and odd juxtapositions. The exhibition options collaborations between the 2 artists and particular person our bodies of labor. For over 5 years, Wright has labored intently with Coleman as his artwork “coach” at Artworks/Group Built-in Providers and for over two years they’ve been working collaboratively. For his or her collaborative drawings, Coleman creates the principle character leaving the backgrounds deliberately clean, and Wright then addresses the voids with this trademark buzzy patterning
Coleman’s characters are a disparate bunch culled from all corners of widespread tradition: Garfield, the Phantom of the Opera, Batman, Grover from Sesame Road, Woody Woodpecker, Ms. Pac-Man, and Boo Berry and Depend Chocula of Seventies sugary cereals fame, to call a number of. Every now and then, Coleman goes outdoors of the fictional character vein and dabbles in Hollywood and artwork world figures. Right here, one encounters Coleman’s tackle Rita Hayworth, a Nick Cave sound go well with, and renditions of trippy costumed mannequins from the early 2000s collective, Forcefield. Lots of Coleman’s characters are distinguished by pronounced eyebrows, compacted our bodies the place fingers and toes occupy a lot of their corporeal mass, proboscis-like noses, and an antenna-like protrusion emanating from the highest of their heads. At occasions, Coleman appears to comply with the Surrealist adage of radical juxtaposition. Assume “the prospect assembly on a dissecting desk of a stitching machine and an umbrella” however with cartoon characters, celebrities, and shopper items put in a blender and spilled onto paper. Drawings like Orange & Blue Composition (Garfield, Airplane, Fiat, and Q-Bert), James Gandolfini & Sponge Bob, Blue & Inexperienced Composition (Grover, VW Bus, Geko, and Boo Berry) showcase Coleman as a form of twenty first century pop Surrealist.
A founding member of House 1026, a famend artist-run-space in Philadelphia, Andrew Jeffrey Wright is a multidisciplinary artist working throughout media together with drawing, comics, portray, murals, pictures, animation, display screen printing, zine making, set up, and efficiency. Wright has been creating sample permutations that conjure psychedelic and optical artwork of the Sixties and early 70s all through his creative profession. Wright additionally mines the collective consciousness of his youth, integrating characters like E.T., Garfield, and Bart Simpson (a predilection he shares with Coleman); juvenilia found in his childhood attic; and twists on low-brow slogans discovered on bumper stickers into his follow. It goes with out saying that humor underlies every thing he makes. Wright has all the time championed the dissemination and accessibility of his artwork via t-shirts, buttons, and calendars (Labs with Abs, his display screen printed calendar of anthropomorphic Labradors wanting buff has been a semi-annual mission since 2006). Wright’s work with Coleman is a pure outgrowth of his decades-long perception within the rewards of collaboration. He has labored with a variety of artists through the years together with Isaac Tin Wei Lin, Barry McGee, Clare Rojas, Ed Templeton, Marcel Dzama, Michael Dumontier, and Woodley White.
