Billy Copley- New Works
September 17 – October 13, 2013
In Billy Copley’s new works on paper, he has returned to the use of imagery.
Some found, some the result of an extensive drawing process and some culled from
earlier works but with many new twists. Unlike the “Bag Drawings” series, where the
subject and background gradually became one, the new images are set apart from the
painted and collaged backgrounds in a physical way. Loose brushwork and collaged
grids of plaid and bricks make up the backgrounds while crisp 3-D images, made on
separate pieces of paper are loosely attached to the surfaces. The effect is like a child’s
game board with pathways like Chutes and Ladders or Mousetrap. The attached images
are like game pieces, destinations or hazards.
Copley cites the influence of Oyvind Fahlstrom - a 1960’s New York based
Swedish Pop artist who used cut out shapes attached with magnets that could be moved
about to compose what he called “variable paintings”. Fahlstrom envisioned an
interactive art where the viewer could rearrange the elements.
Copley’s color palette is rich in yellows, oranges, pinks and greens, glowing with
hints of Technicolor. His facility with luminous glazes and washes may come from his
training at the Chouinard School, later Cal Arts, which has a long association with
animation and Disney.
The overall effect is spontaneous and physical, the images explode, and suggest
an oblique narrative. A rainbow path, a double fisted cartoon arm – shapes that may or
may not be body parts. More familiar images of roses, bullets, and a full-blown treasure
chest, add to the mix of semi-abstract forms and burst out of the square.
Hung unframed and directly on the wall- there is some slight physical depth
inherent in the painted paper. The attached pieces create shadows and a three
dimensional effect. While little modeling or dimensionality is evident in the attached
pieces, they do cast shadows and create a physical three-dimensional space. The result
is a tactile one; of the kind you see in a comic strip or animation cell. Painterly
passages, brushy and relaxed, open up areas of breathing space. Copley continues to
build upon his own vocabulary of images, related to earlier eras in pop culture,
surrealism and folk art.