There are few more potent, less obscure images than the target. The concentric circles signal the drawing of attention to the center – unwelcome attention, predatory and destructive. In a backhanded homage to contemporary America, Ellwood Risk conflates sex and violence by superimposing the target on silhouettes of (usually female) objects of lust. Oh yes, and then he fires away. Graphically lucid and balanced as they are, the works in Risk’s “Collateral Damage” series depend on the ferocity of their process and banality of their imagery for their impact. Other artists have interpreted the commodification of the sexual body by fetishizing it, multiplying it, iconicizing it, but Risk literally targets it, and is willing to shoot it. It’s not the first time the gun has been used as a paintbrush – Risk credits the influence of Sigmar Polke, William S. Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson, and to them can be added the efforts of, among others, Niki de St. Phalle and Dick Higgins – but those predecessors by and large exploit chance in the pattern provided by the bullets; in the context of “Collateral Damage,” every shot means something depending on where it hits.
These are political and social comments, but their message, while none too subtle, is hardly pinned to contemporary events. The current state of American polity provokes Risk to this exploration, but does not tie him to the vocabulary of, say, a political cartoon. One might infer narrative from the position of the silhouette and its target in the ambiguous abstract space containing them, as well as the presence of neatly rendered, and dynamically suggestive, words; and certainly, the pattern of bullet holes fairly cries out for interpretation, no matter how much we take into consideration the vagaries of Risk’s marksmanship. But one is well advised to stop short of “reading” these forceful graphic apparitions; while they do not profess the indifference of, say, Jasper Johns’ targets and flags – bullet holes have a way of dissolving neutrality – neither do they move us from a beginning to an end. They are animated in their own way, but are hardly cartoons; rather, they are emblems of our condition – or better yet, of our attitudes. In this respect, Risk’s relationship to Johns is more significant than his relationship to Burroughs or St. Phalle; the painting-collages of “Collateral Damage” are as much flags as targets.
Ellwood T. Risk is making a statement, but it’s a statement he wants us to feel even sooner than he wants us to know. The impact of the bullet must be sensed. Our skin must become the surface of the works. Those figures must not simply lure us, but must be us. Finally, Risk insists we get beyond the callous distance that has abetted the moral and cultural, not to mention political, decline of our country. Every image in “Collateral Damage” makes us feel the gun’s recoil – and the bullet’s impact.
Peter Frank
Los Angeles
November 2007