| We’re kicking off the fall 2006 season with this raucous one-person show, featuring new work by Boston-based musician and artist Joe Wardwell, including paintings, drawings, and an original, 12 inch vinyl record on which Wardwell has composed, performed, and recorded all of the music, and has created the jacket art. During the opening, the limited edition album will be available to collectors at a special, one-day-only price.
Wardwell sees his album as bringing the fetishistic qualities of art collecting together with music collectors, explaining: “In this day and age, the vinyl record is the last true ‘object’ in the music industry; primarily only avid music collectors still listen to the smooth, crackly, sounds of the analog record. My album, influenced by seventies rock, heavy metal, garage rock, and grunge is done in the style of the great rock albums such as Led Zeppelin IV and Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality.”
The world of Rock and Roll is not only a noisy place, overloading our ears, it is also a powerfully visual place, where the stage is set from eyeliner to outfits, and from fog machines to thrusting poses – outrageous visual effects are recognized as being a significant element of the rock experience, identifying and dramatizing our favorite characters and sharpening our enjoyment of the art form. In his paintings and drawings, Wardwell combines images based on contemporary rock and roll culture with images drawn from the history of art – the compositions and styles used over the centuries to invoke higher powers, to pay homage to nature, and to express love and lust. Wardwell is particularly known for combining his knowledge of the work of Rococo era painter, Fragonard and the Italian Baroque painter Tiepolo, with his vast visual vocabulary of 20 and 21st century rock icons and other denizens of this world; his work often combines the mannered poses of the 18th century with the paraphernalia of this one (beer cans, platform shoes).
“Full Length” is Wardwell’s second one-person show at Allston Skirt (his first, ROCKoco, was on view in June 2004). In it, in addition to debuting his record album, the artist presents large scale multiple portraits on canvas, and smaller, more intimately scaled paintings and drawings of individual rockers and rock lovers, each one with its own intimacy and intensity, and each done using sepia washes. Wardwell’s work has also recently been seen in a one-person exhibition at Green Street Gallery (“Joe Wardwell: SOLO” September 05), and in exhibitions at Brandeis’ Rose Art Museum (“Spot On: Current Works from the Studio Art Faculty”, and Gescheidle Gallery in Chicago (“SEX, DRUGS, ROCK N ROLL,” Spring 2006).
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