"What's Up Dock?" Twenty-eight artists explore idols, icons, and pop culture
Interact is thrilled to announce the upcoming opening of What’s Up Dock?, an exhibition featuring drawings, paintings, sculptures, and artist books by 28 artists.
What’s Up Dock? plays with idols, icons, and pop culture: visions that linger in our collective memory – alternately dreamy, odd, funny, chilling – that might equally reflect our culture and ourselves.
What makes an idol an idol? As the title suggests, What’s Up Dock? is partly a study of the characters that haunt certain pockets of American culture. Gary Rorby’s electrifying Bugs Bunny renders the cartoon in a wide-eyed, frenzied state, his mischievous catch phrase written at his side. Carl Clark’s eerie unnamed clown, painted in flat red and white tones, has an uncanny resemblance to Ronald McDonald. Ashlea Karkula’s Shaq O’Neal adorns the athlete with basketballs for shoes, an Icy Hot tube affixed to his bicep as he soars to the hoop. Briana A.’s Lady in a Pearl Earring, Devin Wildes’s Samsans, and Bill Crane’s Star War reference pillars of pop royalty, having titles that play with and poke at idols of art history and box office hits.
Mingling in the sea of familiar faces are more nuanced icons: images of personal significance to their creators that further explore what makes something iconic in the first place. Teazu Juah’s energetic flag drawings weave elements of her family history with aesthetic research to craft new emblems of profound meaning to the artist. Janice Essick’s shadowy painting of a vessel, its surface flecked with soft patterns, emits a supernatural glow. Kaia Burg’s handwritten list of things she plans to draw (“spiders, fingernails, rotten tomatoes…”) immortalizes the artist’s process.
What’s Up Dock? places these images, some ubiquitous and others private, next to each other. Come by and you might find yourself face to face with God or Twiggy or something in between.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
When | March 7 – April 18, 2024
Where | Open by appointment at Interact Gallery, 755 Prior Avenue N., St. Paul, MN 55104. (Not to be confused with Interact Center.)
Opening Reception | Thursday, March 7, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. Free and open to the public (no appointment necessary).
Visit in person | Make an appointment at calendly.com/interact-gallery or send us an email at gallery@interactcenter.com.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Garrett Anderson, Mary Burdick, Kaia Burg, Annemarie Burns, Katie Bretzman, Carl Clark, Bill Crane, Janice Essick, Jesse Ferdinand, Aunsheya Givens, Kramer Hegenbarth, Teazu Juah, Ashlea Karkula, Chris Mason, Juan Mendez, Caleb Nesbitt, Evita Newman, Rosemary Perronteau, Thai Bao Pham, Philip Price, Lucy Picasso, Gary Rorby, Dan Schlaag, Briana S. "A.", Bonnie Thorne, Victor Van, Devin Wildes and David Wright.
COVID-10 SAFETY PRECAUTIONS
At this time, masks are optional at Interact Gallery.
ACCESSIBILITY
Please visit this page for more comprehensive information. Interact strives to be a welcoming and accessible place for all visitors. If there is something we can do to make it easier to visit us, please contact us at gallery@interactcenter.com. We welcome all suggestions and requests.
Image (above): Carl Clark, Untitled, 2016, acrylic on canvas paper, 24 x 18 inches.
Image description: An acrylic painting of a smiling clown with a white face, arched black eyebrows, a red clown nose, red lips, and puffy red hair. The sky is black, the ground is dark green, and there is a brown path leading to the horizon line.