COLLAGE COLLISION: Roy Dowell’s painted collages appear...
LOS ANGELES — COLLAGE COLLISION: Roy Dowell’s painted collages appear to be about a head-on collision between revolutionary Old-World Modernist art and the zingy pop culture of the States. There is also more than a little overlay concerning the symbolism of signs, some of it quite funny.
One of the 30-odd untitled works pastes in a pair of billboard green olives with pimentos. Dowell draws a pair of tassels on the red parts and they become a classic burlesque strippers’ breasts. He brings politics to Cubism by adding a logotype of a red-and-yellow hammer and sickle that includes the fractional word, “Democra-.†Rumination on glasnost .
Some of the muscular spirit of Fernand Leger animates the work. Small black-and-white monotypes suggest Dowell feels an affinity with Brancusi and the expressionist work of Philip Guston so the notion of the eccentric, scruffy worker-artist is fully entrenched.
Dowell is so busy making his work look chaotic and hip that it takes a while to notice how good he is at extending the underlying elegance of pioneers like Picasso and Braque, as in a stingingly suave composition of red and green or some small collages where the pieces click in like a well-made jigsaw puzzle.
* Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 8525 Santa Monica Blvd.; to May 26.
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
