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20/1/2011

Eric Yahnker

Kunsthalle L.A., Los Angeles

A real comedian – that’s a daring man. He dares to see what his listeners shy away from, fear to express. And what he sees is a sort of truth about people, about their situation, about what hurts or terrifies them, about what’s hard, above all about what they *want. *A joke releases the tension, says the unsayable, any joke pretty well. But a true joke, a comedian’s joke, has to do more than release tension, it has to *liberate* the will and the desire, it has to change the situation.
Trevor Griffiths (Comedians)

AMBACH & RICE is pleased to present *Cracks of Dawn*, a satellite exhibition in Los Angeles featuring new drawings and sculptures by Eric Yahnker. The exhibit conflates artifice and authenticity to construct a poetic and perverse exposition on the American condition. Yahnker outwardly refutes moral and political decency in favor of comic rationality, employing absurdity to assault absolutism.

*Cracks of Dawn* is permeated by Yahnker’s monumental photorealistic charcoal, graphite and colored pencil drawings, installed floor to ceiling on two walls amidst a wallpaper comprised of varying cans of food thickener. Through the lens of what the artist describes as a “Mel Brooks-ian take on history” the artist suggests ethical dilemmas through visceral depictions that vacillate between the transcendent and the grotesque.

In *The Big Con-onization (Mutha from Calcutta) *Yahnker enmeshes Mother Teresa with Marlon Brando’s iconic role as The Godfather. Amidst a stark film noir setting, cigar in hand, the audience can alternately supplant themselves as *interrogator* or the *interrogated*. Piety is obscured by a *smoke screen*, while the motives and legitimacy of a *Saint* are disparaged, the veil of the seemingly impervious hero breached. Yahnker positions this Saint *Chiefy Chief 5 Bunghole Hat *is comprised of a Native American chief adorning an elaborate headdress with a visage reminiscent of a sambo-esque blackface minstrel. Five floating anuses further exacerbate the shock and irrationality of the image.

The work was inspired by Sam Peckinpah’s 1965 Western, *Major Dundee*, set in 1864 in which both North and South, atheists and the faithful, abolitionists and slave owners, unite in their shared hatred of the Apache Tribe. Yahnker appears to imply that his image is no more erroneous than portraying Native American’s as murdering and pillaging savages in popular Hollywood Films, more often than not played by Italians in red-face. The work highlights America’s deep seeded history and continued fear of the *other*, evidenced in the ongoing gay marriage debate. Together the drawings elicit a morally ambiguous and absurd context that casts doubt on our ability to assess ethicality and authenticity, particularly when deprived of social and historical consensus. Yahnker achieves this charged atmosphere without fully disclosing or pontificating his own sentiments or agenda, compelling the audience to paddle up shit’s creek without a map or lifejacket.

The drawings are augmented by a series of sculptures, both unassuming and heroic in scale. *Tequila Mockingbird (One Tall Sombrero) *a fourteen-foot tall sombrero suspended from the ceiling, consumes the center of the gallery in a fashion reminiscent of a straw Liberty Bell. Yahnker has in essence planted *the* *elephant in the room*. The sculpture’s height alludes to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, containing the Citizenship Clause, which in 1857 overruled Dred Scott vs. Sanford, enabling African Americans to obtain citizenship. *Stitches n’ Dishes*, an elegant arte povera inspired sculpture, consists of commemorative plates containing religious, Americana and pop culture iconography in addition to the artist’s own clothing, cut into one inch squares and wound into concentric rings that result in a form indicative of a rug or the rings of a log. This work could be perceived as a summation of the conundrums imparted in this exhibit, pitting labor against disposability, a whirlpool of over simplified messaging rendered abstract, a mirror that refuses to reciprocate a gaze, a self perpetuating delusion.

Despite the uncertainties Yahnker appears intent on moving forward in his aim to assert a “future oriented visual treatise, using past as prologue, and psychoanalysis as philosophy” to set a stage in which conflict condemns complacency.

*Eric Yahnker* was born in Torrance, California. He received his B.F.A. in animation from the California Institute Of Arts and studied journalism at University of Southern California. Recent solo exhibitions include *Nervous Surf*, Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Paris, FR and *Naughty Teens Garbanzo Beans*, AMBACH & RICE, Seattle, US. His work can be found in collections throughout the US and Europe. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

For additional info and images contact info@ambachandrice.com

Opening 21 Jenuary 2011

Kunsthalle LA
932 Chung King Rd., Los Angeles

stampa

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