Despite the fact that it all fits in four rooms, the sojourned exhibit on display at the University Art Gallery could keep eyes mowing its endless lanes of cartooned minutiae for hours. Though Andy Warhol and other jaded culture-nihilists may have initiated the sardonic pop art tradition of printed silkscreens, Mark Dean Veca’s 21st-century redux manages to reintroduce consumer couture in a burlesque style that peels tongue-in-cheek iconography from supermarket shelves and R. Crumb comics.
With blaring ’60s affinities, the graffiti frescoes and abstract installations that debuted last Friday on the walls of Mandeville’s western end belong to this visionary Veca, a 46-year-old Brooklyn-based graphic artist currently working out of his L.A. home. Veca, who got his start at Otis College of Art and Design before apprenticing with art-school proffessors, has been a frequent feature in East Coast art rags for the last couple years, is currently acting as his alma mater’s artist in residence and has also agreed to send some of work south for the remainder of the winter season.
Whether Veca’s homecoming is a sign of the times or not, his return to the college milieu of LRG hoodies and busy graphic tees is fitting, considering his overly decorative style. Still, Veca remembers how to keep his public entertained, hosting a variety of drawings, shirts, PVC panels and fine china ‘mdash; all lacquered with coy punctuation or drenched in two-tone washes ‘mdash; none of which will require you to know Reynolds from Gainsborough. ‘ By comparison, Veca is a less conceptually minded pop icon than his catalog-scissoring antecedents (who entertained art critics with telling cut-and-paste collages back in the day), his rambling imagination instead much more satisfied ‘mdash; or perhaps preoccupied is a better word ‘mdash; with reams of run-on details, crosshatchings and cloudy abstractions than commenting on the era’s consumerism.
‘My Mary,’ one of the fairly larger pieces in the collection, squeezes early Renaissance between two cartoonish cannery mascots in a characteristic juxtaposition of Veca’s puckish technique. Guarded on one side by Popeye and on the other by Charlie the Tuna, the image of Michaelangelo’s ‘Pieta’ ‘mdash; so iconic and threadbare it has all but lost its spiritual dignity ‘mdash; is sketched in the same heavy-handed ink and embossed with a blushing blood-orange pigment. While the flaccid ideas that choreograph his art can be underwhelming, they’re made optically entertaining by Veca’s neurotic need to fill every inch of what would be empty space with coils, umbilical tendrils and other excessive textures.
The novelty of Veca’s visual wit proves to be one of his defining features in the adjacent room, where, cavorting along 18th century-patterned wallpaper and pillowcases, Tinkerbell flashes her fairy parts among other magical vignettes. Entitled ‘Klusterfuck,’ the jocular Sodom-and-Gomorrah spread sets a black and white tone for the other comically erotic artifacts in room, tightroping craftsmanship and crass ingenuity with a veiled smirk.
Most of the paintings don’t demand too much contemplation from their audience (which has always been Pop Art’s appeal), and Veca’s penchant for excess understandably makes for an amusing stroll. But beyond the visual gags, reveries and surprises, his pieces also cater to the easily distracted sensibilities of a vigilant commodity culture.
With the rest of the exhibit adding painterly blueprints and glossy photos of his past interior designs (as well as a room installation wrapped in a frenzied nebula, entitled ‘My Bride Phantasmagoria’), the modest gallery does its best to a accommodate a diverse fantasia of iconic bric-a-brac. For all its ornamentation ‘mdash; either strenuously writhing ink through imagery or puffing itself with tempera paint along the walls ‘mdash; Veca’s work is an entertaining romp that makes
up for what maturity it lacks in unbridled verve.