Courtesy the artist and The Project, New York

Ari Marcopoulos, "Poison" (2008). Photocopied photograph, 53 x 36 in.

February 2009 Reviews

Tetsumi Kudo

Giorgio Morandi

Italics

White Columns Annual

Lisa Sanditz

Omer Fast

Sarah Lucas

Jost Münster

Charline Von Heyl

Hannah Villiger

Vik Muniz

Andy Warhol Investors Indulge Appetite for Luxury Dealer Holly Solomon’s Papers Headed to Smithsonian Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark The Second Sex (at Auction, Anyway) Warhols Send Sotheby’s Soaring A Showdown for Doig at Christie’s Art Collector and Former Lover Resolve Hirst Dispute

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The title of this show, "Fear God," could conceivably nod to the Puritan black-and-white of Ari Marcopoulos’s enlarged photocopies of digital photos, which constitute this small but vivid show of work from 2008, or to the downcast eyes and heads of his portrait subjects, though it seems doubtful Marcopoulos’s models — culled from his familiar milieu of teenage skateboard and hip-hop enthusiasts — are immersed in prayer. Given his reputation for documenting street life, these chalky images nicely contrast with Marcopoulos’s usual high-definition photos and indicate a deeper theme of Marcopoulos’s work: markings of all kinds, whether in a drawing of rapper Lil Wayne by the artist’s son, a concrete yard awash in graffiti, an autographed Andy Warhol photo, a tattoo that reads "G4 Life," or a T-shirt with "Left Coast" dimly printed on it. Poison evokes a more subtle visual motif — the subject’s plaid pants reflect the grids and streaks evident in blowing up the photocopies to poster size. In one corner a YouTube-style video showed a white teenager lip-syncing to a Tupac Shakur song in a home kitchen while a cohort darts in and out of the frame; though similarly low-tech, it functions here as a Wizard of Oz-like leap into the color missing from the rest of the show, and a break from the hermeticism of the other portraits. Looking fearlessly into the camera, the boy makes his mark in a more confrontational manner. "Ari Marcopoulos" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' February 2009 Table of Contents.