High Life

Eleanor Harwood has hosted many strong exhibitions that befit the zeitgeist of Bay Area art, an ethos that embraces imagination, craftsmanship, and social consciousness. Unfortunately, the current show of drawings by Kyle Knobel, entitled “High Life,” comes closer to describing the zeitgeist of American hipsterdom, characterized by incurious appropriation, prolonged adolescence, and self-induced ennui. It's disappointing that Harwood has chosen to promote work that falls within a trend that does little to engage in broader political and aesthetic conversations, but is highly derivative, self-serving, and self-referential.

Knobel presents basic contour drawings of everyday objects, such as beer cans, pill bottles, and remote controls, often inscribed with pithy sayings like “Not Feeling You” and “Let Us Go Home And Screw.” Drawn with a meandering line created with a marker or occasionally a brush, the objects appear alone or are arranged into simple tableaux, uniformly centered in a sea of white or cream paper. The faux-naïve line quality and distorted shapes allude to a trendy comic book vernacular, which is reinforced by the hand-lettered text, but the isolated objects adorned with ironic quips and tired clichés provide neither narrative nor insight. The result resembles a series of sixth grade notebook doodles, but without the earnestness.

It is this apparent lack of sincerity that we find so problematic. Knobel's attempts at humor and insight merely reiterate the self-obsessed hipster culture of apathy and irony that has permeated the American art scene. He creates images that rely on the ornamental trappings of this group,

Box of Crap, 2010; brush & ink on paper; 8 x 10 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco.

which represent the appropriation of the working class by the privileged cult of the lazy. This appropriation has become especially offensive since it has now been so distilled as to be unacknowledged.

In his artist statement, Knobel writes: “To me, the darker the story, the greater the possibility for humor and insight. Laugh or cry, I say." One wonders what story could be formulated by looking at his images, for they are virtually devoid of meaning or evocation, be it narrative or ethical. It is this acute lack of possibility for insight or humor that keeps these works trapped in the realm of the self-referential, and fails to spark prolonged engagement with them.

“High Life" is on view at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco through May 15, 2010.

Peter Dobey and Katie Humphries are artists who live and work in San Francisco.