Tag: Tops Gallery

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Art Art Feature

“three left, one right”

James Inscho (Photo: Michael Donahue)

The title of James Inscho’s show — “three left, one right” — doesn’t refer to dancing.

“The works are abstract, but deal with the ideas of revisiting, reliving, and reconstructing fragments of observed moments and felt experiences,” says Inscho, 40. “So, the title means a few different things to me.

“Three left turns is one right, and that’s the long path we take to arrive at a simple decision. The other interpretation is three lefts plus one right is a 180-degree turn, and that’s a return to where you came from.

“Rather than thinking of it as directions left to right, you can think of it as three options remaining and one is correct.”

“Left” can mean a direction, but it also can refer to what’s left when something is taken away. “And ‘right’ can be a right turn or it can mean ‘right’ as in what’s correct.”

Inscho includes 30 acrylic gouache paintings in the show. “The works are kind of defined by a shifting of space and context. Brushstrokes become shadows. They become forms. They become space. The paintings are in a state of flux.”

The show, “in a sense, speaks to the beauty and uncertainty and the simultaneity of our access to all these different perspectives at a moment’s notice of every event, everything that happens. Seeing experience through a lot of eyes at one time.”

As the press release states, “We might see flat brown brushstrokes criss-cross a flame-red field. Matte black marks become shadows, and now the brown strokes are transformed into sticks, a pile of logs, a mound. It takes so little for the mind to write a story. Look again and it’s only brushstrokes.”

Painting abstract works was not what Inscho originally wanted to do growing up in Dothan, Alabama. “I really wanted to be a Disney cartoonist.”

He remembered watching Disney artists in the animation studio on trips with his parents to Orlando, Florida. “I just remember people working on The Lion King when I was a kid.”

Inscho, who played basketball and golf as a kid, also held an interest in music. “I learned guitar playing on my dad’s classical guitar when I was 8 or 9. Just kind of self-taught.

“I bounced around schools and I pursued a lot of different interests. I was interested in architecture at one point.”

Inscho first moved to Memphis in 2004 because he “just wanted a change of pace.”

While at University of Memphis studying graphic design, Inscho took a painting class with Chuck Johnson “and really took to the medium and the language and the history.”

Inscho, who got his BFA in 2011, had never lived in a big city like Memphis, which he felt “was a bit more cosmopolitan. I had a lot more to learn about life, and art provided a vessel for figuring some stuff out.”

Inscho then went straight to grad school at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he lived for 11 years. “I had some shows and some interest and kind of rode that little bit.

“I had several years after grad school where I ran off the fumes of what I accomplished at grad school. And that summer following graduation I kept making work, but things kind of petered out after a few years and I hit a cross-point with my work. It felt like the way I was working wasn’t right for me anymore. I was just feeling a different way about life. Things needed to change to line up more with how I was experiencing things. So, I started from the ground up again.

“I withdrew from the art community in Philadelphia and hunkered down in my studio and tried to figure stuff out. I felt like I was banging my head against the wall for three or four years.”

He turned from making larger, more geometric paintings to smaller ones, which were “more improvisational. More gestural. More evidence of the hand.”

In 2022, Inscho returned to Memphis, where his wife, Whitney Hubbard, is from. “Moving back provided an opportunity to reprioritize and revisit what I wanted my life to be like post-Covid. I wanted to be an artist that’s more engaged with my community.”

He found Memphis to be “such a wonderful” city, where “people have time for you” and “energy as a creator here is really good.”

Inscho reached out to Tops Gallery owner Matt Ducklo, who he met when he first lived in Memphis. “I think Matt just has a really great eye. And it’s a very contemporary space. It’s quirky. It’s a basement space.”

The gallery also “gets national attention. I know he brings in artists from New York and other areas to show in Memphis.”

Inscho has found Memphis to be a “very prolific” time for him since he moved back. “I started making these small paintings six years ago. They’re starting to enter a more mature vision than when I started. I think I’m starting to hit a stride with these pieces.

“When I first started, I didn’t know what a good brushstroke looked like.” But things changed back in Memphis. “I was learning to trust my hand as a painter for the first time.”

Inscho and Memphis are a good fit. “I am a rabid Grizzlies fan. I really enjoy cooking. And I have started to play golf again since I was a kid because there’s so many affordable courses in the city.”

Most importantly, “Memphis is an artistic community. While I was living in Philadelphia, Crosstown happened. TONE started. Tops Gallery started. And now Sheet Cake [Gallery] just opened. It feels like a good time to be an artist in the city. I’m happy to be back.”

“three left, one right” is on view through March 9th at Tops Gallery at 400 South Front.

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Art Art Feature

Going Surfside: Adam Higgins’ “Lonesome”

Adam Higgins’ “Lonesome” is on view at TOPS Gallery. (Photo: Courtesy TOPS Gallery)

In his new solo exhibition, “Lonesome,” on view at TOPS Gallery through May 7th, the Los Angeles-based painter Adam Higgins throws a small tantrum about mindfulness. The tantrum takes the form of light purple lettering, inscribed backwards around the border of an oil painting of tumultuous water merging with sand. The lettering reads, “EYE CANT STOP THE WAVES AND EYE DONT KNOW HOW TO SURF,” a riff on the well-known mindful refrain of you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.

Higgins’ paintings could easily be misinterpreted as being concerned with a perpetually present moment. His minutely detailed depictions of sea and sand and wildlife meld into abstracted fields of dots, suggesting a meditative process. But the paintings in “Lonesome” are hardly zen. Both their subject matter and formal qualities hang at the frustrated edge of abstraction and realism, the visible and invisible, figure and ground, and of life and death.

Higgins, who was born in California but raised in Tennessee, received a BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2012 and an MFA in painting from Yale in 2018. As a younger artist, he gravitated toward the inward-gazing abstract paintings of artists like Agnes Martin and Forrest Bess. His more recent works are abstract in the sense that they are unconcerned with any objective reality, but they engage photography as a reference and counterpose realist and abstract techniques. Higgins’ first solo show in LA featured paintings of California halibut, a flat fish that camouflages itself in the sand; thin shadows separate speckled flat fish from equally flattened grounds. In these works, Higgins attempted a visual double-entendre by flattening a fish that is already trying to flatten itself by making combinations of flat marks. A living fish becomes the ground, becomes a photo, which becomes a painting, then emerges to the viewer as a fish again, or at least the idea of one.

“Lonesome” extends Higgins’ concern with this ontological gray territory, but the series of paintings is less unified in terms of subject matter. The exhibition is organized less like a single proposition and more like a poem. To make the paintings in the show — five of which hang at TOPS main gallery (at 400 South Front) and an additional three of which in a new storefront window-style gallery at Madison Avenue Park at 151 Madison Avenue — Higgins worked from snapshots he took wandering the beaches near his home. For the triad of paintings in the park, he photographed moths that landed on the window of his studio at night. Only one painting, of a poodle lying prone on a sea of purple, departs from this theme. The poodle painting, “standard poodle,” is arranged in a visual couplet with the painting of sand and sea. Around its edge, a mirror ring of text, “YOU CAN’T STOP THE WAVES AND YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO SURF,” leaves an open question: Is Higgins accusing the viewer of similar inability to achieve a state of mindfulness? Or is the painting a self-indictment, a way of reminding himself to stop faking a meditative nature painter schtick? It is hard to tell whether the poodle is playing or terrified.

Higgins’ strength as a painter shows when he leans into a challenge. Sand is a nearly impossible subject for a painting because it is simultaneously indivisible and made of infinite parts, at once every color and no color at all. Higgins’ painting hidden surf perch with line attempts the impossible by showing the sand as a penumbra of abstracted color around the disappearing edge of a perch and the thin record of a fishing line. In “mussel rock,” a foreground of spotted rock and background or grass and surf feel oddly flipped; it is hard to tell what is near and far. Higgins’ triad of nocturne paintings of moths vacillate between hyper-visible descriptions of the insects and dark abstracted backgrounds, an effect that makes them appear more graphic than the other work, perhaps to a fault. Another painting, dead seagull with live walleye surf perch, is violently bright and somehow the light appears reflective, the way it does on an actual beach.

If the job of science has been to divide up nature into the smallest possible parts, the job of painting might be to recompose it as whole. Impossible, of course — the best a painter can do is show the moment when the fish, the sand, the moth, or the wave disappears from view. Higgins’ “Lonesome” succeeds because it manages to hint at an edge of violence in this shifting terrain of becoming and unbecoming without overexposure.

Artist talk this Saturday, April 30, 4-6 p.m. Adam Higgins’ “Lonesome” is on view at TOPS Gallery through May 7th. TOPS is at 400 South Front, and Madison Avenue Park is at 151 Madison Avenue.

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Art Exhibit M

Art Stuff To Do this Weekend

Richard Knowles Legacy Project

When I was a freshman art student at the University of Memphis, I was fortunate to be able to take a drawing class from Richard (Dick) Knowles. He would come into class and walk straight into the storage closet and shut the door. Knowles would start to talk to us about our projects as if he were in the classroom. After five or ten minutes he would test our visual memories by having us draw what he was wearing that particular day, to see if we were paying attention to him during the three seconds it took to walk into class and in the closet. I always thought this was an odd exercise.

HE WORE THE SAME THING EVERYDAY. A blue long-sleeved button down tucked into blue jeans. The particular shades of blue were the only thing to ever change, and that was only because they would fade over time in the wash.

Knowles, who passed away in 2010, is being recognized with the inaugural Richard Knowles Legacy Project currently on view at Circuitous Succession. On Sunday, February 26, 2-6pm, there is the closing reception, and his partner Carol Knowles, former Memphis Flyer art writer, and Larry Jasud, retired Professor at the U of M, will be giving a gallery talk about the life and times of Dick Knowles. There are so many stories about this man, it should be a fun event sharing these with those that knew him best.

Katie Murray

• The Memphis art scene is notorious for not showing up and supporting art exhibitions on a regular basis. This is even more so if the exhibiting artist happens to be from out of town and especially if the work in the exhibition is not about Memphis in any way. Well, this is the case at Tops Gallery for its opening tonight. “Katie Murray: That Shadow, My Likeness” is an exhibition of a small group of photographs centered around her community in Queens, New York. There is also a video inspired by the footage Murray shot of her husband’s audition tape for the metal band Slayer. What is not to like about that? The opening reception is tonight 6-8pm, 400 South Front Street.

• Last week I mentioned the current exhibition at Orange Mound Gallery, “The Black Experience. Tomorrow 2-4pm there will be a Q&A with the participating artists in the exhibition. There will also be two guest speakers. Dr. Ernestine Jenkins will talk about Black History in America, and Dr. Simone Thomas will talk about her book, 365 Days of Black Men in History.

Cat Pena

• Have you been to the Edge district recently to see all the improvements to the neighborhood? They have repaved and painted in new bike lanes and parking spaces. There are also, what seems like hundreds, of large planters everywhere. I do not even know where to drive on the street anymore. Go find out yourself this weekend as Cat Peña’s installation There’s More to be Proud Of at the corner of Marshall and Monroe will be on view to the public. The piece is an homage to the neighborhood as Automobile Row from 1911-1950’s.

Image Credits:

Dick Knowles installation courtesy of Circuitous Succession.
Katie Murray installation courtesy of Tops Gallery.
Cat Peña digital rendering courtesy of the artist.

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Art Art Feature

“An Attitude You Can Wear” at TOPS

Pulling from the immemorial and recollected, the associated and imaginary, Haynes Riley transformed TOPS Gallery into a veritable summer stage in the style of the Absurd Theatre in “An Attitude You Can Wear,” on view another week through August 13th. Scenography associated with the original post-war movement presents itself in the exhibition’s austere and colorless environment — stylized, symbolic objects; selective realism; lax production values; use of projection; and function of movement.

In case examples from 1950s Europe, playwrights such as Samuel Beckett in the West (Waiting for Godot) or Eugène Ionesco in the East (Rhinoceros) used nonsensical plotlines and dialogue that only served to ridicule the state of speech. This was one of the tactics used to stir audiences into understanding the absurdity following World War II. Of course, “An Attitude You Can Wear” is not a play but an installation. There is no plot but what we can imagine — or, effortlessly insert from reality. This is exactly what makes an Absurd Theatre proposition so elegant here and now: Not to get into a pissing contest with post-war Europe, but this summer has been as absurd as it gets. What the intellectual cognoscente saw then is widely apparent now.

TOPS operates out of the defunct coal and furnace rooms in the basement of 400 Front Street. The ante gallery is a “cozy” concrete-on-concrete foyer with nook-and-cranny remainders of extracted machinery. Exhibitions such as “An Attitude” consider the layout of the room, history of the building, natural resources, and moment in time as the first step in creating the work. The information is used as subject matter, to form themes, and to inform what materials can and may be used. Here, it’s all covert — nothing Memphis as Fuck about it. And regardless of Riley being from Arkansas, this is no regionalism either. There’s something very “eating the whole buffalo” about how all the many attributes are used. But, if nothing is sacrificed, it is because this process — start with what you have lying around — is very efficient for the compulsively creative.

What is lying around: a lot of vaguely utilitarian objects; some placed more natively to their use-case scenario than others. A couch covered with a white bedsheet is against one wall, on which you’re free to sit. Above it, straight up couch art: In Cueva de las Manos/La mano de Dios, sand from the Mississippi River was used to reproduce hand-stencil cave art of Paleolithic era. Across from the couch, a white curtain hangs a few feet from the opposing concrete wall, ceiling to floor, and it’s clear this is where the entertainment is supposed to happen. An installment of galvanized steel pipe, waved like a bike rack and punctured in vain with industrial-strength hardware (Toltec Mounds), crosses the curtain’s front width. Our “actors” are scattered about (T-shirts stretched over cardboard with faces cut out), but it’s the prefabricated wooden bar stools, none for sitting, that the artist names: Pedestal Ann with fake plastic plants; Pedestal Elise, straddling Toltec Mounds; Pedestal George in the ante room and absolutely covered in neon zipper. Pedestal Davis is my favorite, because it/he/they perfectly models the estate-sale aesthetic I hold dear: still life with coffee cup, banana, and window unit air conditioner, with homeless duffle bag strap, in camouflage print, lying across the top. Sweet, incidental-like juxtaposition.

If it hasn’t already been established, this is the kind of exhibition wherein objects merely typical to a room are in play. But I didn’t realize the extent of it until I was on my way out, when TOPS owner Matt Ducklo disclosed that the oscillating fan in the corner was part of the show. It worked — quite pleasingly, and I imagine the hotter outside the more unassuming it would be as art in here (rather, a luxury for the everyman). No matter the temperature, taking such a pure, unadulterated readymade very seriously can get a little silly, and that’s not what we’re after here. “Silly” has no value; it’s easy to explain. The source of marvelous comedy used in Absurdist Theatre more closely resembles nonsense.

I recalled the classic Mitch Hedberg joke about how oscillating fans say “no” to things before I wrote Fan off for good. My asking, “Are you art?” as it moved side to side was just the punchline needed.

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Art Art Feature

“Voice of the Turtle” at TOPS.

John Fahey’s 1968 guitar ballad “Voice of the Turtle” is a classic piece of Vietnam-era musical Americana. The song’s train-like rhythms draw out a melody that is as mournful as an empty boxcar but as defiantly optimistic as the all-American promise of something greater down the line. “Voice of the Turtle” is a kind of frontier hymn colored by the psychedelic urge to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”

This past Saturday night, TOPS Gallery opened an exhibition called “Voice of the Turtle” in honor of the late Fahey. The show features a small, abstract tempera work by the guitarist who took up painting in the years before his death in 2001. Fahey’s painting is shown at TOPS alongside work by eight Memphis artists, many with a similar interdisciplinary bent. The show includes sculpture and drawing by Fahey’s friend and 1960s Memphis scene-maker John McIntire, alongside drawings by William Eggleston, Guy Church, and Jonathan Payne, sculpture by Terri Phillips and Jim Buchman, collage by Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin, and painting by Peter Bowman.

Fahey’s small painting at TOPS is nothing to write home about, at least in light of his talent as a musician. Painting was a secondary art form for Fahey, but that isn’t a bad thing. Plenty of artists, including Bob Dylan, David Lynch, and Eggleston, have exploratory painting practices that often meet with undue critical disdain. TOPS’ “Voice of the Turtle” is an exhibition that celebrates these practices, and references a time when the interdisciplinary (art as a multi-hued journey of personal discovery, rather than as a specialized niche practice) was more celebrated than it is today.

A marble “game” sculpture by McIntire occupies the center of the gallery. To clarify: It is a sculpture made from white marble, but it is also a game of marbles. Viewers are invited to drop a marble into one of the sculpture’s many holes connected to a network of tunnels, and assumably, see where the marble emerges. At Saturday’s opening, no one had any marbles (perhaps having misplaced them in the ’60s? ba dum ching…), but not much was lost. McIntire’s sculpture is still beautiful and playful — the sort of thing you’d expect a favorite uncle to have stashed in his attic.

John McIntire’s portrait of John Fahey

McIntire also contributed a small drawing on yellow legal paper of Fahey, sitting in profile, wearing sunglasses. A cigarette hangs out of Fahey’s mouth. The drawing feels like a dashed note, a quick record of a lost conversation. Between this drawing, McIntire’s sculpture, and Fahey’s painting, there is a kind of friendly history — a warm context that makes room for the other featured artists’ work.

Eggleston’s squiggly, colorful drawings are each about five inches tall. There is not much to say about them except that they are really fun, and that every artist should probably make a squiggly drawing once in their lives. Beaudoin’s cut-and-paste collages are assembled from old magazines. They are at once personal and alienated by the material’s faded gloss. Buchman contributed two roughly hewn abstract ceramic works with an understated drama.

The works that pack the most punch are four expertly stippled drawings by self-taught artist Church, whose genre scenes seem drawn from an otherworldly forest. The characters that inhabit this realm are likewise magical; their exaggerated proportions seeming all too natural in Church’s constructions. “Voice of the Turtle” is worth going to see if only for Church’s work.

Another high point in the exhibition is a small drawing by Payne. His elaborate, obsessive mark-making, navigated through hundreds of undulating lines, is quietly done without seeming restrained or restricted. Payne is also the youngest artist in the exhibition, and his presence in “Voice of the Turtle” shows a kind of artistic heritage — a generational relationship between artists that is as open-ended and bravely optimistic as Fahey’s eponymous song.