Jeremy Fish & Kenichi Yokono- Rise of the Underground

Mark Moore Gallery presents Rise of the Underground, a two-person exhibition featuring new works by Jeremy Fish (CA) and Kenichi Yokono (Japan). Each adopting the age-old craft of woodcutting through a distinctive contemporary technique, Fish and Yokono employ bold and enchanting cartoon-like narratives to illustrate quotidian and pop cultural excerpts. Unmistakably handmade and remarkably intriguing, Yokono’s woodblocks explore the “horrors of everyday life,” while Fish’s paintings and cut-outs reveal untapped histories often swept under the rug. Seemingly innocuous at first observation, each work is intricately laced with undercurrents of the sinister and the foreboding, saturated with cultural reflection, psychoanalysis, and social commentary in a fusion of high and low aesthetics.

Drawing from a background of graphic design, screen-printing, and skateboard culture, San Francisco-based Jeremy Fish celebrates and revives the ancient tradition of storytelling. Enlisting his whimsical band of stylized – yet sentimental – creatures to transmit his anecdotes, Fish embodies the “New Folk” methodology born of the Bay area’s “Mission School” artists, such as Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, and Damon Soule. He astutely communicates Orwellian-influenced tales of lore, and grapples with complex human relationships to industry and labor. Somewhat biographical in origin, Fish’s storylines simultaneously rekindle folklorist oral tradition and respond to mass culture in a nostalgic visual language, enveloping viewers in its fantastical, mythical environment.

Jeremy Fish & Kenichi Yokono, Oct 29 – Dec 17, 2011

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