Native Vanguard
Zane Bennett Contemporary Art 435 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe
CURATOR RAOUL PAISNER’S SENSITIVE AND SUBTLE accrochage of works by artists who are both contemporary
George Longfish addresses some of the same politically
masters and indigenous Americans has a cumulative effect,
charged material in brilliantly crafted paintings. Longfish grounds
breaking like a slow wave as you move through the brave Zane
meticulous black and white drawings of native figures in full regalia
Bennett spaces. Downstairs, where the larger, blockbuster,
against colorful impasto grounds of words (stenciled à la Jasper
museum quality works are held, tumultuous forces clash. You
Johns) and fast-food imagery. Longing for the Supreme Buffalo Burger
hear the clashing drumbeat of war, the agony of broken treaties,
is as cuttingly sardonic as it sounds—the comparison between
the harsh cacophony of the mainstream media, the moaning of
advert-induced, consumer-as-idiot longings and traditional hunting
the millions of souls who perished or were stolen by the primitive
is served up—and due to the reverent treatment of the figure
and ill European colonial expansion upon these shores. These vast
drawing, it takes a moment to grasp the enormity of Longfish’s
and monstrous motions and notions are combated by beauty with
project, and to recognize the nauseating social complexes he so
a wry and bitter wit, with the sly sense of art and artists’ agility
saliently indicts.
when it comes to slipping the neck-nooses and foot-snares set for the unwitting.
Like Longfish, Bunky Echo Hawk, Stephen Paul Judd, and Frank Buffalo Hyde all employ elements of mass media and pop-
The upper galleries carry the same potent energies to
culture to similar black-humored effect. Judd’s Honor the Treaties
a contemporary surface of calm seas and smiling sun; waves
offers the Incredible Hulk with long black braids and his fist in your
spun from a violent center now break steadily upon the sand, a
face. His mock-up of the Shepard Fairey Hope poster brilliantly
persistent reminder that the past creates the present by moments,
replaces Obama’s mug with that of a Hopi woman and the text
that the moon swings around the earth thirteen times for each
with the new title, Hopi. Frank Buffalo Hyde’s hilarious Captain
time we circle the sun, tides rise and fall like your breathing chest,
Tonto Scissorhands, a portrait of Johnny Depp as all three fictional
and sometimes, the dawn rolls in on time.
characters indicated balances perfectly between homage and
Edgar Heap of Birds makes the music go bang with his
crowing mockery..
monographic white-on-red rants that put a righteous bullet in the
Upstairs we get back to the future. While there are no major
blind bull’s eye of the imperial American government. From a series
works by T.C. Cannon in the show, the many small drawings,
of red grounds, Heap of Birds erased texts that then read white as
paintings, and prints show the master’s more intimate side and
the page upon which they are printed as writ by a finger in blood;
ground the upstairs space in the 1960s and ‘70s, when these artists
Coca-Cola colors, the most arresting in the world; go ask Goya
mostly came into their own. This sense of intimacy and quietude
on the middle of the 3rd of May. These prints bash the U.S. Killing Machine. One lists the Washita River and Sand Creek massacres that killed so many innocents alongside the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 in an associative leap that brings perspective and immediacy to the terror and despair produced when needless, irrational violence is perpetually perpetrated by the psychotic elements of a spiritually bereft culture.
holds throughout the upstairs galleries, anchored by the modernist color-field paintings of George Morrison. Morrison eschewed identifiable “native” themes in favor of an obsessive universal formalism, and the paintings and prints on display here still exude an immense and harmonious personal power. Coupling them with the figures and sculptural paintings in clay by contemporary ceramicist Anita Fields allows the dignity of each artist to emerge, creating a calm that seems an antidote to the bombast and turmoil of the exhibition below. Ramona Sakiestewa’s subtly toned weavings and sewn drawings increase the impression of gentle, well-earned peace. Finally, suspended in this beatific sky are small buffalo marionettes, and three larger marionette sculptures by Armond Lara. The strings of the carved wood figures are strung with beads, baubles, and attributes of the central figures. Each shows an anonymous face behind a mask. As Billy the Kid holds a rifle, while As Dali holds a pocket watch. Recalling carved wood effigies, and numerous folk-art traditions, these complex, narrative forms have an incredible inventive and imaginative quality. Lara’s Yellow Horse Dancer downstairs is of a larger, more imposing scale, but, as always, there is another face behind the mask, and the breathless sense of awaiting a next first act, the coming of dawn. —Jon Carver
Left: Frank Buffalo Hyde, Captain Tonto Scissorhands, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”, 2004 Right: George Longfish, Looking for the Supreme Buffalo Burger, acrylic on canvas, 94” x 110”, 2004