The New Machines,
100 Billion Times Faster and Cuter
Poker Face, 128
SW 3rd Avenue. Ends April 2.
Ground Kontrol
610
SW 12th Ave., 796-9365.
Check out Newcomer's
art on the Web at www.pacinfo.com/~newcomer.
People rioted
in Singapore recently over a McDonald's-sponsored Hello
Kitty giveaway.
There's a painter showing around town named Kelly Newcomer,
and if you ask her, she'll tell you that she's the bomb.
She might even tell you if you don't ask. This is cheeky,
of course. It's not like her life is that out of the ordinary.
So she reads Wired magazine. So she works part-time
at the UO bookstore in Eugene. And she lives in Springfield
of all places. She tells me this and more when she picks
me up for our interview. We've met to talk about her opening
at Poker Face clothing store called The New Machines,
100 Billion Times Faster and Cuter. The Andy Warhol
scarf she's wearing fills in the gaps when she's not talking.
Like a new brand of soda, Newcomer tries to converge pop
art's fashion and marketing in one neat package. It's hard
to say whether 28-year-old Newcomer will achieve the fame
and commercial success she's banking on--or if, like Crystal
Pepsi, she'll disappear after a pumped-up marketing blitz.
We climb into her car and she turns on a CD of rapper Kool
Keith ("Earth people, I was born on Jupiter") and launches
into an explanation of the title of her new show. The
New Machines part refers to computers and recent attempts
to run photon-fueled processors. Newcomer claims that if
it ever works, machines will run "100 billion times faster,"
as noted in the second part of the title of her show. The
last part of the title refers to her obsession with the
adorable. Since moving to Oregon five years ago, she's been
exploring the theme of preciousness in art. Newcomer authored
a "cute booklet" that explains quite well the role of cute
in technology, marketing and art. It pulls together different
strains of the consumer culture, paying special attention
to the "social communications business" of products like
Hello Kitty and its pens, paper and friendship cards. The
booklet features an artist's statement in which Newcomer
notes that "this cute aesthetic is being used to market
many techno-futuristic products. Many people feel a strong
compulsion to touch, own and play with these products."
She quotes the CEO of Sanrio Corporation (makers of Hello
Kitty) as saying, "Whether one is sad, down, happy or whatever...we
want to help people share these important feelings with
one another."
The slides from her latest show highlight the intersection
between childhood innocence and futuristic machines. Their
colorful pop effect is soothing and amusing--if not terribly
original. In an aside, she says that the cute thing really
had its start when she was living in snugly domestic bliss
with her then-husband. Now they're divorced, and she's losing
interest in cute and getting more and more into computers.
The new paintings at Poker Face are bigger (and more expensive)
than the ones that hung in previous shows at Reading Frenzy
and Bernie's Southern Bistro. Because of some recent success
and an upcoming booking at the stylish ARO.space nightclub
in Seattle, she's raised her prices for this show, making
the people at Poker Face a little nervous. She told one
woman who works there not to worry. "I'm the shit," she
assured her.
We head to the Ground Kontrol arcade and continue on her
favorite subject. "My art's about that moment when you see
something and the moment that follows--when you want to
buy it." Her delivery, in a kind of tone-deaf staccato,
is a cross between pushy New Yorker and the rounded vowels
of her native Minnesota.
In the painting Space Baby ($600), a yellow Teletubbie-type
character lounges like a digital dough boy in a world dotted
by a cheerful galaxy of orbs. Her fascination with communications
technology, consumer desire and the future are right up
front. Many of the paintings show outer space as a friendly
signifier of the future, but they're also reminiscent of
the first time you ever played Asteroids, Pac-Man or Centipede.
Before we leave the arcade, Newcomer charms the owner into
loaning her a Ground Kontrol T-shirt to wear to her opening
the next night. As she poses for pictures in front of a
Rolling Stones pinball machine, she recalls the lyrics to
a Stones song: Every man is the same, come on. I'll make
you a star. "That's my song right now," Newcomer says,
caught up in the lights of the pinball machine. You know
better than to disagree.
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Willamette Week | originally
published March 8,
2000
|
