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Some critics prematurely dismiss collage as an art form for people who can’t draw, but what happens when an artist doesn’t clip and snip to make pictures?
Locally based artist Mars Ibarreche sliced and diced packaging, pulp novels and other materials into dozens of small-scale, text-focused collages. The Pearl District art gallery ILY2 currently displays more than 40 of these in Ibarreche’s latest show, the ephemeral and the enduring, on view through Aug. 9.
Most of the show fills ILY2’s gallery walls, but four are only visible from the street, while nearly a dozen—the most colorful of the bunch—are in the gallery’s dark office and gift shop. Like magnetic word strips for refrigerators, the ephemeral and the enduring offers an arranged poetic that can be endlessly remixed by Ibarreche and whatever gallery hosts their next show.
Ibarreche’s collages trace back to a DIY punk zine ethos. They come from a lineage that celebrates messiness over sterilized order, where destruction breeds innovation. Collage is curation, where arrangement and choice matters as much as cutting and pasting. Liberation from context gives new life and purpose to what might otherwise be tossed out as trash. Bibliophiles clutching pearls over Ibarreche’s use of old books ought to marvel at how their work still compels literary curiosity.
Arranged in a typical horizontal line spanning the gallery, the ephemeral and the enduring is a collection of tastefully muted collages the size of supermarket paperback books. Their most impressive features are how flat they are with backgrounds of irregularly shaped scraps. Seams from scissors aren’t as obvious in digital samples of Ibarreche’s work as they are in person. Seeing them live gives the viewer an opportunity to appreciate the intricate level of craftsmanship at play.
A certain East Coast aesthetic emerges within the gallery, where typeface feels as significant and symbolic as any images. The collages could easily be at home in any tiny New York apartment, where limited wall space makes small pieces like these visually pop. One with a white art deco font on a red background shows the shredded words “love” and “love me” (and a few loose words and letters in small black font) recalls Valentine season ads from department stores’ golden era. Deep blue cut-out letters spelling “the sea” twice on a dingy off-white background feel connected to a surviving 1940s communiqué washed up a week earlier on an Atlantic shore. A red and cream-white one that almost easily reads “fire” could be a special-edition cover for Fahrenheit 451.
The word “heart” is among the most repeated words in the show. “A Radical Heart,” “A Roaming Heart” and “A Hearts Heart” don’t look lifted from Harlequin romance, but through their fonts still suggest tawdry tales from swinging in the ’70s. A few pieces are implicitly queer-coded, like ones that say “daddy” or “sexy energy.” The LGBTQ+ community doesn’t own these terms, of course, but these pieces’ presence injects otherwise timeless words with a refreshingly youthful energy.
The show’s success depends on the viewer’s taste level and word associations. In a similar manner as the aforementioned “the sea” piece, the word “rage” appears twice on one collage in black letters on an off-white background. Nothing more, nothing less. Minimalists will love it while maximalists may feel slighted. A contrasting piece, pink and black asymmetrical stripe strips with the words “strange,” “passion” and “if you” might satisfy that crowd’s cravings for something visually busy.
But one piece hits all the sweet spots. A series of cream and sea blue-green blocks looks like a mix between a trophy and something alive, like a tree branch or a whale tail. Two words are present: “by” and one of the most versatile English words that’s a noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Their individually cut, slightly deeper blue letters spell a word that spans generations and cultures, a powerful word that functions like seasoning to spice up sentences.
“Fuck.”
SEE IT: Mars Ibarreche’s the ephemeral and the enduring at ILY2, 925 NW Flanders St., ily2online.com. 11 am–5 pm Thursday–Saturday, 11 am–6 pm Sunday. Free.
