The Or Gallery is pleased to present Flesh and Blood, an exhibition by Vancouver artist Steven Brekelmans. His new series of ink drawings on panel reference subcultural imagery such as underground comix and punk/heavy metal gig posters. Exhibited as a sculptural installation, the work employs images that harken to early expressions of anti-authoritarian counter-cultural movements, which have since shifted into established and anachronistic signifiers of “the underground” within mainstream popular culture. Flesh and Blood reconstructs the tropes of these aging visual languages and contextualizes them within the domain of contemporary art. Here Brekelmans’ enlarged cartoons display reverence for illustrated art forms, the coded black and white line work and the technical skill required to render them. The works are also simultaneously drawings, sculptures and (monochrome) paintings suggesting a mixture of 20th century art figures running from the quintessential low brow of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth through one liner New Yorker cartoons to major figures of abstract art such as Anne Truitt and Ellsworth Kelly. The ambiguity of this mixture is apparent and asks us to reflect critically on the historical movements of visual form and the qualities and conditions of human expression.

“Swarm 16“