Can a clown be a work of art? Or a pile of bricks?
Well, yes, if the artist is Houston-based Ryan Hawk, whose work is on display at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park. Stretched out on the leaf-strewn ground, Outside Agitator (All Artists Are Bastards) is a brightly attired but sad-faced clown, with frizzy, rainbow-streaked hair. Clowns, like drag queens, are at once comic and subversive, frightening some children and unnerving even some adults. This one reminds us of the artist’s moody ambiguity and outsider status.
There’s ambiguity, too, in Takeaway/Throwaway, stacks of light-gray bricks embossed with tuning forks. Produced via 3D printing, bricks not for construction are meant to be taken away by viewers, until the pile is gone. Life may be short, but art can be fleeting, too. The scored and punctured glass panels of Untitled (front 1) suggest both gunfire and openings for seeing.
Sweet Pass is a surprise clearing in woods among gritty old West Dallas commercial buildings. Hawk’s subversive socio-political subtexts, explained in an essay by Sweet Pass co-founder/director Trey Burns, are quite at home here.
Details
Through Nov. 18 at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, 402 Fabrication St. 12 to 5 p.m. Nov. 18, other times by appointment. No phone, but email at: sweetpasssculpturepark.org.
