Chris Hood
Chris Hood
Chris Hood
Through April 11 - Chris Hood: Tony Clifton Eats for Free at Et al. To be able to enjoy this superb show the viewer needs no previous knowledge of Tony Clifton, the legendary character invented by Andy Kaufman and perpetuated by Bob Zmuda and others since Kaufman's death. However, it's fun to learn the title derives from the fact that Clifton's Cafeteria in L.A. (currently closed for remodeling of its glorious kitsch btw) allegedly maintains an open tab for Tony Clifton, a wonderfully surreal set-up if ever there was one. Hood's paintings and installations utilize a similar tension between the real and the imagined as he liberally references pop culture iconography, mixing recognizable images and abstracted forms with glee. The L.A. artist applies color directly onto unprimed canvas and also dilutes his paint so that his work appears to be doing a slow fade-out from our memory before our very eyes. Tony Clifton Eats for Free contains a delightfully fractured body of work that echoes the nature of how we absorb and process information in these media-saturated days.
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