The Art of Broken Records: The Werewulf Micah Wesley and Hoka Skenadore

September 1, 2008 through October 12, 2008


Lloyd Kiva New Gallery at the IAIA Museum, 108 Cathedral Place, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (Click here for a map)

Timing is everything as far as history has shown. As far as art is concerned this is true as well. There are times when artists have chosen pathways that have eventually led critics, writers and historians to the conclusion that an art movement took place in the wake of their creations. The idea with the jumble of painted records in The Art of Broken Records is to illustrate that at times these forces coagulate into something larger than any one artist or the work they make.

There are strong parallels between Hoka Skenadore and Micah Wesley, the two artists featured. Micah and Hoka have been painting for a long enough to understand that the world at large has had a hand in shaping their lives. Within their work there is the influence of popular culture: graffiti, street art, outsider art, tattoo art, outlaw-skateboarder culture and a general rebellion of how one should fit into the square peg that society spoon feeds everyone. The Hip-Hop element links the artwork in this show, as well as the tradition of DJing. DJing has evolved into the complicated sampling of break-beats, digging in moldy Goodwill bins for dirty funk records, supporting rappers and in general, and providing an ass-shaking good time for people within ear-shot of a set of the speakers. The Werewulf Micah (aka DJ Kwai Kane) and Hoka (aka DJ Rob Gordon) both understand the importance of the record in Hip-Hop, as well as communicative powers of urban calligraphy (aka graffiti). The power to transform the banal surface of a drab wall or the rusty panels of a freight train has moved into altering the playable record surface via painting, transforming something that was once strictly for listening. Because graffiti implies, if not begs, for a type of controlled disregard of conventions and rules, the same can be said for the way that this circular pictoral plane is used in the show. Just like with live Hip-Hop (whose deep roots exist firm in Jazz and the Blues), improvisation goes into the construction/destruction of the composition. Why stick with the rectangle or square when one has three hundred and sixty degrees to play with? Initial observations of graffiti kids from Texas to New Mexico inspired the first of these paintings. The painted records of Gerhard Richter had shown that this was a medium that could be used from the gutter to the gallery, as well. Micah and Hoka`s work shows a high-wire balancing act between the two.

On a major key or minor note, both Micah and Hoka are avid, if not obsessed, record collectors whose taste in music is as varied as the imagery they create on these same records. From Kraftwork to The Stray Cats, ABBA toThe Rolling Stones, or Madlib to Link Wray, no sound is safe, no groove is too good or bad as long as it moves. The same goes for the artists paintings, from skulls to ships to disembodied hands, it is up to the viewer to make heads or tails of all of it.

As with life, there are no easy answers, just reflections of the world at large. This work doesnt provide any simple story or instant gratification that too many other mediums provide. The work is re-mixed through the minds and brushes of these two humans, and the final result can be witnessed in the show.

Very rarely do two minds wander the same path in the manner that these two have. So enjoy the show, dig the grooves, and if it moves you then it just may have worked.

Please join us for the opening reception Friday, September 5th from 4-7pm. Call 505-983-1666 for more information.