Randy Twaddle: Reversal Drawings
BY JOHN DEVINE
ARTL!ES
Summer, 2003
Randy Twaddle's Reversal Drawings, which ended an eight-year hiatus from the Texas art scene (during which he built a business and started a family) prompted feelings of gratification and annoyance in about equal measure: gratification because the work is so sharp and beautifully executed; and annoyance because he's deprived us of the pleasure of it for so damn long. Comprised of seven charcoal drawings, ten digital inkjet prints with hand-applied gouache, and a DVD loop, its title referred to the artist's practice of collecting cliches, song titles and other phrases and reversing them (in the classic deconstructive MO) to see what happens. What happens, also in about equal measure, is amusement and insight.
Twaddle was born in Missouri, where he took a BFA from Northwest Missouri State University in 1980; he completed his MFA at the University of Houston in 1996. He's exhibited extensively throughout Texas, beginning in 1983, as well as in such exotic locales as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Some of the last works before his timeout were large drawings of communications satellite dishes (not DirectTV); the transmission of ideas and information has, for some time, been an ongo-ing concern for him.
The charcoal Reversal Drawings are very large, approximately 5 feet by 3 feet, and they follow the same format: the reversed phrase appears on a twisting strip, as if fallen out of a Chinese fortune cookie. In each drawing, the strip is more or less vertically aligned and centered over a series of thin lines that run down the length of the paper and suggest tire tracks. Twaddle draws from life and is quite meticulous in pinning his strips of paper just so, to catch light and obscure letters, making it something of a game to identify the phrase. Other graphic elements are smudges of heavily worked charcoal and lighter specks across the surface of the paper that suggest neglect or abuse, like the paper has been tossed around in the dirt and grit of the city; the smudges and specks stand in sharp contrast to the meticu-lously clean lines of the pitch dark lettering.
By contrast, the gouached digital inkjet prints are clean and pristine. There are two scrolls to each print, horizontally aligned, usually placed in opposite corners, and articulated by the blackest gouache covering the rest of the print. The lighting in these prints is more subdued and delicate, darker than in the drawings, and that can make the "game" of identifying the phrase more challenging; often enough, you have to wrack your memory for the complementary word. For example, in Talented and Lovely/Unusual and Cruel (all works 2003), the word "unusual" sits in deep shadow, inviting you either to risk eyestrain or consult the checklist.
But there's more to these drawings than fun and games. In Void and Null, the strip rises pre-cipitously out of the "void" and curves sharply back into "nullity"; a phrase usually associated with commerce becomes more metaphysical. And when the phrase Stripes and Stars is arranged to render "tripe stars," one has to think there's a political statement being made. Or, to cite one more example, not in this show but from a selection of this body of work that appeared at Moody Gallery the previous month, the reversed phrase "determined and bound" reads "ermined and bound," suggesting a rich linkage between luxury and bondage. Even the initially amusing pairing of A Dog Named Boo, and You and Me/Sniff and Scratch becomes more thought-provoking when you remember the next line of that silly song: Traveling and living off the land. The second phrase begins to suggest foraging, scraping to get by, in uncertain conditions.
In his statement, Twaddle calls this practice of reversing common phrases and cliches a "reclamation strategy particularly appropriate for use in a culture that's tired and sick" (presumably, he's already added "awe and shock.") Cliches become cliches because they're useful shorthand, a common verbal currency. But they also encourage laziness of thought. Twaddle's Reversal Drawings are beautiful, trenchant reminders of that danger, at a time when our political discourse-never very lofty to begin with-is further debased by corporate sloganeering and the prattling cant of snake-oil salesmen.
Piece of Work
BY MOLLY BETH BRENNER
Austin Chronicle
March 21, 2003
Rock n' Roll, Drugs and Sex
Charcoal on paper by Randy Twaddle
in "Randy Twaddle: Reversal Drawings"
D. Berman Gallery, through April 5
A huge charcoal drawing looms on the wall of D. Berman Gallery; gray-black billows, splotches, and smears meander across it like a plume of post-apocalyptic smut. Upon closer inspection, the texture of the piece reminds this viewer of industrial waste products: factory smoke, coal dust, oil stains on cement. Thin lines run through the background of this bleak scene, simultaneously evoking those ubiquitous bar codes on supermarket products and film streaks that appear onscreen at the beginning of old rundown black-and-white movies. Floating through the grime is a curling banner printed with the words "rock n' roll, drugs and sex."
The background world of Twaddle's drawing is covered in tired filth. Even the phrase the viewer may initially think she's seeing, "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll," has been worn to dull gray with overuse. By reversing the phrase and placing it at the center of this burned-out scene, Twaddle draws our attention to it, making it an example of verbal recycling in an otherwise wasted landscape. Sure, "rock n' roll, drugs and sex" sounds off and a little out-of-the-loop, like something a conservative Christian preacher, or first-semester English as a Second Language student, might say. But it's new, and it offers a strange sense of whimsy and hope to this otherwise gloomy work. Rock n' Roll, Drugs and Sex offers a glimpse of innovation for those tired and sick of this hackneyed world.