Will Staples: 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work

Who wasn't obsessed with Bigfoot, Loch Ness, UFOs or Jaws? To be truthful, many people probably escaped this 1970s affliction. But Will Staples did not, and instead vouched to use these mediated images lodged into many young psyches throughout that decade for his recent series of paintings. Staples's best works create a mise-en-scene beyond cardboard-thin appropriated cultural references. Bigfoot becomes a quilted pattern field, and dark undifferentiated brown paint reflects a murky televised past. Staples's painting technique is an almost fuzzy soft-focus, with colors that conjure forlorn treatment. Some of the paintings feel too quick; in general, the more complex the surface incident in his paintings, the easier it is to encounter the paintings as filters for ghostly nostalgia.

The wall text in this small exhibition claims Staples's lengthy research into the photographs he copies as a cornerstone to his art's effect. But with imagery as indebted to cultural familiarity as is the case here, it seems ludicrous to accept purported specificity as meaningful to interpretation. The ability of the images to be generic is their power. Here, Staples's paint handling—a technique that pulls the viewer toward the image's time, rather than pulling the image forward into ours—makes the familiar uncanny. At his most successful, Staples turns paint into a form of handcrafted time machine. His exact images and references are beside the point, but the painted mood of being stranded outside of time is infectious and reflective of long dormant obsessions.—Anthony Elms