Jason Hsu and Chris Kline
We were standing in Pageant Gallery Saturday afternoon and a steady stream of lookers came by to get up close and personal with what lured them in from outside the window. Chris Kline and Jason Hsu‘s exuberant, gargantuan installation knocked us and all the other visitors out with its boyish comic charm and high key color brushwork. Amazing what you can do with a little house paint on cardboard and some hard work…..ok some talent too.
Phillies Fan
The bold patterning and psychedelic charms immediately reminded us of the Hairy Who and Chicago Imagists–who also were mining comic books, cartooning, pot culture and pop culture. We want to say Karl Wirsum, Jim Nutt, Roger Brown and Ed Paschke just to drop some names.
Crab on a skateboard
Hsu and Klein’s collaboration spun off Space 1026 Paper Jams (they’re both members) — weekly exquisite corpse drawing sessions. Pageant has plenty of the Paper Jam drawings on view–and a time-lapse video made by Hsu that demonstrates the creation of one drawing.
For the Paper Crystals show, Hsu made the sculptural objects out of cardboard and Kline was painter in chief. The pieces are modular and can be stacked different ways. The artists told us they might be coming back to re-arrange the furniture. They may collaborate again in the future but for right now they’re tired and are taking a break.
They had lots of friends stopping by while installing and gave props to Max Lawrence in particular who encouraged them to place some of the work on the walls.
Palm tree
Kline (aka Snax) told us he’s working on a children’s Hebrew alphabet book with a Brooklyn printer he met at Prints Gone Wild, Cannonball Press’ print jam in Brooklyn. Hsu told us he’s looking for a job. He does web design (see link at top of post).
