It was like being a teenager again. Or at least like being in some teenager's room back in the 1980s, when I had pegged pants, patent leather creepers and the misguided notion that shopping from the International Male***image1*** catalog would be pretty cool. There weren't any cassette tapes, underwear or bottles of Aquanet Extra Super Hold splayed across the floor at Ursa (550 Guadalupe St., 983-5444), the gallery/boutique that Gebert Contemporary has annexed, largely for the purpose of showcasing the various endeavors of Cochiti Pueblo wunderkind Virgil Ortiz. Instead, what gave the crisp, bright space a distinctly teen vibe was Ortiz' artwork which, these days, is of the highly graphic, magazine spreadish, nouveau-Native-cum-Patrick Nagel, sophomoric genre that is a big hit with hormonally-charged, still-developing brains. In '80s teen jargon: It's, like, in my mind, I totally know that Ortiz is a cutting-edge fashion designer and a rad artist, but, like, emotionally, I fully think that Duran Duran got there first.
Ortiz, we know from the public record, is a stand-up guy. Sure, he rolls with a posse of metrosexual, fashionista gadflies, but he remains rooted in respect for the traditions and values of Cochiti Pueblo. He uses his increasingly significant star power, not to mention his personal income, to create access to arts and culture for the youth of the pueblo and to preserve the Keres language.
What he's failing to preserve, however-if his latest many-faceted assemblage of creative efforts,
Le Sauvage Primitif
, is any indication-is Virgil Ortiz himself.
What purport to be "paintings" at Ursa, but which really are stylized, digital renderings printed on canvas or other materials, are cologne ads…or video game stills…or poster art for the bedrooms of angsty teenagers. In other words, they are not the aesthetic of an individual and of an artist, but the more globalized, universal signifiers intended to broadcast simple messages like "style," "exotic," "sexy," "edgy," "unexpected," "dangerous."
What is missing entirely is any sense of layered complexity, any hint of irony, any sense of soul. Such a void may be acceptable for a fashion designer-although I suspect it is not, at least at a certain
echelon-but it's not congruous with the word or, more aptly, the practice of art. There is one story that suggests Ortiz limits the amount of pottery he sells each year because the clay work is sacred and it simply doesn't do to profit too much from it. The utter void of tangible content in the remainder of Ortiz' work is enough to make one wonder if, because he hopes to profit from it, he intentionally leaves it bare of any meaning or importance.
Rather than having their work consumed by a market-driven, corporate-tumor aesthetic, the artists exhibited in
POP is Native Vinyl
at Pop Gallery (133 W. Water St., 820-0788), subsume those aesthetics to their own use. A theme show where most of the work was made atop vinyl record albums or other appropriated surfaces, the simple exertion of contrast against an iconic form creates the distinction between art and ad fluff that was absent from Ortiz' efforts. Whether in the punk flier-style assaults of Jake Fragua, the hipster cartooning of Watermelon 7 or the introspective and illustrative works of Rose B Simpson and The Werewulf Micah, there is a gritty, earnest awareness of the artist's hand and intention throughout
Vinyl
. Douglas Miles of Apache Skateboards, the elder statesman of the group, used album sleeves instead of vinyl and altered the imagery and wording into a subtle, autobiographical motif. By inserting his Apache identity onto popularly recognizable cultural events like
Saturday Night Fever
, he deftly asserts the alien otherness of Native Americans within the worldview of white culture.
Using collage elements and paint on can lids and bucket tops, Canuppa Hanska Luger creates dreamlike sheaths of imagery that fuse notions of popular culture and counterculture and jumble collective mythology into a kaleidoscopic, personal vision.
I hate to be the white guy nitpicking about the different directions in contemporary Native American art, but Santa Fe, as an epicenter of the Native art scene in the United States, is poised to be a battleground in the expanding, worldwide dialogue about the cooptation of aesthetics and traditional motifs into global design lexicons and visual media of all kinds. The current generation of young Native artists has finally broken free from the aesthetic stranglehold that Indian Market has enforced for decades. The question is whether, in escaping from the jaws of one beast, they have become prey for a much larger and more sinister creature?
