![\"postcard.joshua_callaghan.softtargets.2\"](\"https:\/\/archive.raulmourao.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/postcard.joshua_callaghan.softtargets.2.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJOSHUA CALLAGHAN : soft targets<\/p>\n
January 2014<\/p>\n
royale projects : contemporary art is pleased to present Soft Targets, a solo exhibition of new works by Joshua Callaghan. In this show Callaghan presents a suite of recent charcoal rubbings of commercial signage found in greater Los Angeles. In these works, Callaghan takes banal elements of the American landscape and relocates them to the rarified walls of the gallery. These works reveal the latent poetic dimension imbedded in the disposable vernacular messages that surround us.<\/p>\n
Hunting in the suburban expanse, often cloaked in darkness, Callaghan ascends a ladder and makes an impression of the text or imagery on wet canvas and denim. Using the found signs as a kind of printing block, he captures the pre-existing image. The result is a collection of words and symbols that form a fragmented portrait of our society. \u201cBeauty\u201d isolated from the Beauty Shop sign becomes a meditation on art and aesthetics; \u201cCash\u201d, withdrawn from the Check Cashing stores that prey on those who need money fast, becomes a commentary on wealth and value.<\/p>\n
The show title, \u201cSoft Targets\u201d, refers to the Target logo that has been incorporated into a series of these works. The charcoal technique creates an imperfect impression. These flaws convey the handmade, human quality of the rubbing process, and, perhaps, the humanity underlying the cheap, mechanical surface of the signs. Callaghan describes the process as \u201cthe opposite of street art. I hope to take something back from the suburban, big box crudscape* that characterizes the America we have built. Instead of taking art into the landscape, I am displacing the landscape, preserving it, and exposing the basic human needs that these signs embody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joshua Callaghan (Doylestown,PA, 1969) has had solo exhibitions at Haas & Fischer Gallery, Zurich; Bank Gallery, Los Angeles; and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as L & M Arts, Los Angeles; Galleria Fortes Vila\u00e7a, S\u00e3o Paulo; Venus Over Manhattan and Gavin Brown\u2019s Enterprise, New York, where Roberta Smith listed Callaghan as one of the artists “that steal the show” in her New York Times review of the exhibition. Callaghan was recently included by ArtPhaire, a contemporary art magazine curated by Park Hyatt, as one of the \u201c10 Artists to Watch at Art Basel Miami Beach\u201c along side artists such as; Tracey Emin, Nan Goldin and Thomas Houseago. This is Joshua Callaghan\u2019s first solo exhibition at royale projects : contemporary art.<\/p>\n
* Crudscape is a term coined by James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere, Touchstone, NY, NY, 1993.<\/p>\n