STEVE POWERS - STUDIO GANGSTER GINGKO PRESS STUDIO GANGSTER published on the occasion of STEVE POWERS: THE MAGIC WORD Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts October 20, 2007–January 27, 2008 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 118 North Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 OPENING IMAGE For my family, thanks for the baggage, and PAFA graduate Don Martin. Steve Powers: The Magic Word by Alex Baker Steve Powers is a pop artist in reverse. Instead of several years preceding the ICA exhibition. A Harvey, Dearraindrop, Nicole Eisenmann, Adam by Disney in 1997, peep shows and pornographic Powers ruminations on aspirations for success, using the current modes of expression associated cacophony of ESPO, REAS, and assorted found Cvijanovic, the Gents of Desire, Swoon, Gary Panter, movie theaters along 42nd Street near Times Square invention and reinvention, and the attendant with the advertising industry, he draws from an signs were anchored to the roof of the bodega and and Os Gemeos, among many others, created new (vacated by the stateʼs right of eminent domain tortures that come with the turf will soon be earlier era of words and images—the bygone the adjacent gallery walls, mimicking the visual signage and identities for businesses who could not during the real estate recession in the early 1990s) leveraged for social good—in marginalized youth idiom of the handpainted sign. Powers strives noise of the cheap urban-retail experience. Powers otherwise afford major facelifts.* In summer 2005, served as temporary public art installations and communities in Dublin and Belfast, in southern for authenticity in reviving this artisanʼs pursuit, hilarious phraseology was underscored in signs Powers opened the Dreamland Artist Clubhouse, interim artistic outposts courtesy of Creative Time, and northern Ireland, respectively, the result of a employing the richly vibrant, albeit highly toxic, like “ESPORAMA/Sensibly Slum;” “Fast Nickʼs in which customers can buy ready-made signs, but the same public art organization that spearheaded Fulbright fellowship he recently received. Working One Shot sign painterʼs enamel in his artistic Dust Spot/A Philly institution since Friday;” and an most importantly, serves as a residency program the Coney Island Dreamland Artist Club. The 42nd with troubled youths, Powers will paint murals that endeavors. The feel of Powersʼ painting is outdoor billboard installed in a West Philadelphia for artists interested in the tradition of handpainted Street art project drew so much favorable attention he hopes will, at the very least, provide a positive simultaneously “now” and “then”—a clever neighborhood near ICA proclaiming “Open to get advertising. The Clubhouse also offers artworks as from both a general and contemporary art audience role model for disenfranchised kids to make things balance of traditional graphic styles and methods you open/ESPO creative outlet/Where stupidity is prizes at selected amusement stands, rather than that major corporate interests took notice. Is it ironic happen for themselves. As a teenager raised on the usual stuffed animal or goldfish in a plastic bag. of application with a narrative sensitivity that always in stock.” Inside the bodega, Powers and that a former graffiti writer working in Coney Island the streets of Philadelphia, a self-made artist with *Powers credits Dick Zigun, a graduate of Yale is decidedly of the moment. It is no surprise that James designed mock-consumer items, identified Powers refers to painting the cars of the Cyclone in might have enticed developers to notice the real exhibitions in prestigious galleries and museums, Universityʼs theater department, as an early visionary Powers has dubbed his Pennsylvania Academy by their trademark tags and characters, and/ 2004 as a highpoint of his artistic career. The iconic estate potential of an increasingly attractive, yet still corporate clients, and the author of two published in Coney Islandsʼ aesthetic revival. In 1980, Zigun of the Fine Arts exhibition—his first solo museum or invented product titles that referred to the wooden rollercoaster, which has been in operation somewhat blighted, neighborhood? Or, is this just books, Powers ability to transform street cred into established a non-profit organization to produce show—The Magic Word. When I was first feel-good states of being experienced when one for eighty years, holds a special place in New one more instance of the endless contradictions of an artistic livelihood seems particularly relevant plays about the history of Coney Island, eventually introduced to Powers nearly ten years ago, I was “purchases” their brands (products included cans Yorkʼs collective imagination. Since his involvement capitalism? and inspirational to young Irish hoodlums. Indeed, struck by his dexterous and witty verbal skill, a of “Street Cred,” “Dignity,” “Sarcasm,” “Guilt,” in Coney Island, he has also painted new graphic his witty insights on the trials of selfhood smacks reviving the 10-in-1 sideshow with its legions of freaks, kind of hybrid poetry that blends the locution of and “Delusion,” among several others; all the identities for the Eldorado Arcade, bumper car Powers most recent body of work both swaggers of a deep Irishness that is confirmed by the name re-energizing the boardwalk with this nearly forgotten hip-hop bravado with a tough-talking sensibility of labels were professionally designed and printed, rides, and several food concessions. and self-deprecates and is deeply confessional. “Powers”—just like the whiskey. populist theatrical form. His efforts served as a a 1940s film noir character. This idiolect is total and seamlessly blurring the distinction between real and But who is doing the confessing? Are these template for what Powers initiated years later. dynamic: it not only defines his speech and writing, fictional brands). The bodega is a fitting metaphor Powers has always been fascinated by the autobiographical missives from the frontlines of but it is deployed along with visual elements in for the graffiti writer: what is perceived as ugly, intersection of art and commerce, citing the Powersʼ despair and beaten- down outlook? Or are his painting. underground, and an affront to the quality of life, masterful marketing of 19th century entertainment these emotional icons the sum total of omniscient, Alex Baker is Curator of Contemporary Art at the continues to exist alongside the gentrified. Later, entrepreneur P.T. Barnum as exemplifying the universal angst that permeates all strivers trying to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Powers embrace of the word undoubtedly comes at Deitch Projects, the Venice Biennale and several blurring of advertising and the spectacular move forward in a perpetually self-absorbed New where he has organized projects with artists including out of his graffiti background where words—names, other venues, Indelible Market morphed into Street experience. Coney Island harkens back to the pre- York—a cognitive map of a particularly virulent Robert Ryman, Phil Frost, Marcel Dzama, Monique really—are front and center. In the mid to late-1990s, Market, in which overturned trucks, a taxi dispatch Disney days where spectacle was created through strain of social Darwinism? Powers best leaves these van Genderen, and Adam Cvijanovic, among others. after moving to New York from his hometown of stand, and a liquor store, among other elements, competing typography and garish images—the questions unanswered and that is why his text/ He recently curated Ellen Harvey: Mirror, a major Philadelphia, Powers, known as ESPO in the graffiti joined the bodega in a post-apocalyptic vision of a domain of signpainters, the first “imagineers” (to image equations hit home so hard. At times sharing site-specific installation by the artist that explored world, embarked on his last largely illicit sweep— world gone marketing mad according to the likes of borrow a phrase from Disney). Coney Island retains an ironic kinship with self-help literature, as well as the Victorian Gothic architecture and teaching the Exterior Surface Painting Outreach (ESPO) TWIST, ESPO, and REAS. an out of time, gritty authenticity of carnies, barkers, the mass appeal of self-identification conveyed in practices of the Pennsylvania Academy. A former project in which Powers “improved” paint-peeled and snake handlers, as well as amusement owners the best pop songs, Powers addresses addiction associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, rolldown shop security gates with his ESPO moniker In around 2002, Powers began experimenting with who were at first wary of the overtures by Powers (“My hobbies include quitting stuff,” accompanying Philadelphia, Baker curated Indelible Market: Barry throughout greater New York. Evoking advertising storyboard painting—employing individual panels and fellow artists offering to paint signs for free. images of pills, a bottle of booze, and a burning McGee, Stephen Powers, and Todd James and East as well as the benevolence of community art as sequential segments relating a narrative, much But Powers experience in the world of graffiti and cigarette in a composition reminiscent of an old Meets West: “Folk” and Fantasy from the Coasts, programs, Powers saturated the public sphere with in the fashion of a comic strip. These works tell his brushes with the law enabled him to deal quite grocery store sign complete with spray paint fade); among other exhibitions. He has a Ph.D. in visual his tag. Powers called this “building the brand.” stories of the