Posted on November 22, 2024 by Melissa Stern

Llyn Foulkes: The Untied State of America

Pat, 2020. Pigment print, oil, acrylic, red oak, and found objects on wood. 31 3/8 x 25 3/8 x 1 7/8 inches

Llyn Foulkes is a 90-year-old painter, jazz musician, troublemaker and visionary. After making a splash entrée on the American art scene in 1961, he hopscotched around the artworld, changing genres and styles as his restless mind embraced new ideas. He has been “consistently inconsistent” (from his website), wonderful for an artist, but not always strategic for a career. The commercial art world can be somewhat conservative, preferring that an artist find a groove and stick to it. As a result, though brilliant, Foulkes has not yet achieved the wide recognition that he deserves.

Perhaps that will change after the career retrospective currently at A Hug From the Art World in Chelsea. Spanning 1949 to 2024, the show is a beautifully curated view into the Foulkes Universe. The exhibition is divided loosely into three parts, conveniently arrayed over three floors of the gallery.

The ten cartoon drawings from 1949 portray the foibles of us humans with an irreverent dry wit. Some of them recall early R. Crumb works or the cartoons from American Cartoonist Magazine, founded in the 1940’s. Caricatures of typical American men leer at women and one another. The human comedy is depicted in a droll and loosely drawn way– very much of an era and very much an example of Foulkes worldview. These brilliant drawings were made when Foulkes was just 15 years old.

Union of Hypnotists, 1949. Ink and pencil on paper. 8 1/2 x 11 inches

Part of a series labeled Outtakes, these are works that have never been shown in a gallery space. This part of the exhibit includes a facsimile of two walls of Foulke’s studio in Los Angeles. A delightful accumulation of “stuff” that gives us insight into Foulkes’s wicked sense of humor and interests. Vintage photographs mingle with road signs, animal bones, industrial objects, and knick-knacks, the detritus of a peripetia life, mind, and artist.

Cabinets and studio wall installation, 1976-2024. Mixed media

The most current work which is on the first floor is ruthlessly honest, political, biting, funny and frightening. Foulkes is unflinching, His references to racism, Trump and war in the Ukraine are especially fierce. This is angry and urgent artwork. Not always easy, but immensely satisfying for those who have watched the changes in America since 2016, the start date for this body of work. Referencing pop and political icons such as Micky Mouse, Teddy Roosevelt, Pat and Richard Nixon and the Trumps in his work Foulkes magnifies the psychological dissonance we all experience in our daily media bombardment.

In Surrender (2022), Foulkes uses found media and paint collaged over giclee prints to present us with a formal portrait of a young man. His bloodied face partially covered by a Ukrainian flag, he nonetheless holds tight to a harvest sickle; wheat being a major export of the Ukraine. He breaks the traditional picture frame, symbolizing the violence and resilience of those fighting to stay free. It’s a chilling portrait.

Surrender, 2022. Giclee, acrylic, and found media on panel.62 1/2 x 29 1/2 inches

Many of the works incorporate found objects and found media. Foulkes has a keen eye for how to tweak a photograph and make it his own. A wall of these images on the lower level of the gallery is hilarious, delightful and more than a little alarming.

Wall installation of various small pieces.

Uncle Sharkley, 2022. Giclee and oil on panel. 16 x 11 inches

Uncle Sharkley (2022) is a portrait of a man both benevolent and creepy looking. His vaguely retro outfit is a little too big for the overly-orange head that gazes cheerfully into the distance. And his teeth are weird. The thick and vigorous brush strokes surround the photographic image and seem perhaps on the verge of smothering him.

This is a show that will get your heart beating a little faster and both fuel and channel your moral outrage. It’s also darkly funny, and we could all use a little more humor these days.