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"Forever is a Long Time," Jeff Stevens. Waking Life Jeff Stevens's work channels the child's eye in "@**#!&! Comic Relief" By Jeffrey Nakamura Comic books are the inspiration for Jeff Stevens's five new paintings. Eschewing any postmodern irony, Stevens engages his kitsch subject with unabashed enthusiasm. His large, acrylic works gleefully evoke the violent, vivid world of dime store reading materials. His largest and most successful piece is titled Forever is a Long Time (49x71?"). From a distance, it appears to be a simple enlargement of an EC horror comics page. We see a ghoulish looking indigent sifting through trash in a back alley. In the first caption he mutters, "If I could only find somethin' that I could sell an get enough money to buy a drink." To his amazement, he finds a bottle containing a malevolent looking genie, rather than whiskey. His eyes widen as he contemplates his first wish. The bottom caption reads, "He wanted riches and power and he got them ... plus something he didn't ask for." The story is not continued on another canvass, but this is far from a cliffhanger given that Stevens has skillfully couched this narrative fragment in collective myth; there is little doubt that our hobo will meet a gruesomely ironic end according to the tenets of the genre. Steven's understands that comic books employ a peculiar, visual short hand. They render the world in broad strokes and reduce it down to an iconic landscape. Stevens confidently wields this visual language. However, he is not content with facile homage. Close inspection finds the artist probing the confines of the aforementioned landscape and filling it with chromatic and compositional aberration. From a distance, the margins are an off-white color mimicking acid ridden paper stock. Up close, they are a sickly flesh color with hints of rosacea. Line and form become wildly organic on the micro level, desperately attempting to break free from the cartoon superstructure. The panels are infused with an irrational degree of detail. The hobos beard and eyebrows have been rendered with such zeal that they resemble a bear's coat rather than human facial hair. Stepping back once more, a new perspective emerges. The painting is no longer a simple graphic narrative. The micro and macro have converged to form a hyper intense vision. It entices us to regress to a long forgotten state of mind. One in which reality and fantasy competed on a level playing field. We are in the world of comics as experienced by a child -- or at least a grown man channeling the mind's eye of a child. Where else could one find the effortless coexistence of innocence and nightmares, sensuality and purity, or death and immortality? More importantly, where else could dreams compete so forcefully with waking life? Stevens's paintings will be on display through September 21 in "@**#!&! Comic Relief." The show also features six hand blown glass sculptures by Rev Timothy T. Taylor. Ardency Gallery, 709 Broadway, Oakl. 836.0831; www.ardencyart.com. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]