If you haven’t seen or heard anything from Neckface in the last year or so it’s because he’s been busy. Buried in the trenches and immersed in the field, the artist has been working devilishly hard on his upcoming solo show, Drinking On The Job, opening Friday August 22rd at New Image Gallery in Los Angeles. Featuring work that is born out of darkness tender only to barflies, the project is inspired by and fully consumed with the world of alcoholic hedonism through the eyes and mouth of Neckface himself.
Part artistic practice and part anthropological query, you could say that Neckface ‘went native’ in order to create this series. Working days and nights, the artist adhered to a strict creative process shrouded in the lighthearted but gloomy atmosphere akin to bars and pubs. Each piece is imagined and drafted in an impaired state, in the field, sometimes with little to no recollection of his sullied genius until the scrawled upon napkin is found the morning after. From there, the piece is refined into an exquisite form that falls somewhere between the work of Robert Crumb and a PlayBoy cartoon with the sensibility of an adult (alcoholic) version of Bart Simpson.
Vulgar in both theme and tone, this work does in fact ask ontological questions regarding bar culture. The premise of such an inquisition may seem mundane at first glance, but the comically grim one-liners of each drawing are entirely at home in the presentation. What is of paramount importance here, is that we remind ourselves how a debase arena of public life has produced a wealth of material for Neckface to draw upon; he is like a beacon in the crude barroom world. With little regard for ideals rooted in anything remotely P.C. this work asks you to suspend any serious sentiments and see the artistic validity and humor that lies somewhere near the bottom of a bottle.
