the last show at Arthouse was 5X7. many pieces were entered that met the single criterion of fitting in a 2D 5x7 space.
this was my favorite entry. mainly because the word "hippie" has diverged in meaning and can alternately inspire admiration in some and scoffing disregard in others. every time a visual artist decides to take on semantic symbols rather than iconographic symbols as his subject, he is rocking the bridge that joins two different literacies. visual literacy and linguistic literacy have different origins in culture and motivate different sensibilities. the humor, if indeed this piece invokes humor, is made possible by the fact that "hippie" can no longer be rendered as an icon: there is no readymade media image of "hippie" in contemporary culture. not since the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog has such a thing been accessible to the collective cultural imagination. In fact for the generation of young artists making, showing work now, "hippie" has been around so long that it can mean no one thing. Hippie-life for some is a politicized, holistic way of life that encompasses many aspects of sustainable resourcing. For others, a hippie is a do-nothing, ambitionless, smelly freeloader.
this piece in 5X7 relies exactly on that ambiguity to interpellate the art-viewer into a "hippie" decision. is hippie-life something that should indeed die, not only iconographically but semantically as well? or is it something that can still be salvaged, and if so for what purpose?
